


Of Swords and Sage

by twistofpayne



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: (implied death of minor characters only), Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Enemies to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Sex, Violence, Witches, generally just a spooky story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 00:46:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15352491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistofpayne/pseuds/twistofpayne
Summary: Liam knows that Harry, the innkeeper’s son, dislikes him. He won’t go so far as hate, since he doesn’t seem capable of anything stronger than stirring the soup cauldron or, more importantly, rolling a casket of mead into place behind the inn’s serving counter. Hate is definitely too strong a word. Annoyed, maybe. Disapproving, definitely.But Liam doesn’t concern himself with the intractable approval of the innkeeper’s son. He’s here for a job, not to fraternize. In fact, if there’s one thing he’s learned from his travels since he’s picked up his bow and his sword, it’s that making friends with the locals only makes his job more complicated. And Liam has never liked complicated.





	Of Swords and Sage

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the moderators at [the1DCollab](https://the1dcollab.tumblr.com/) for their hard work organizing. 
> 
> Endless thanks to Mia ([ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMipstaz/pseuds/TheMipstaz); [tumblr](http://nevergooutofstiles.tumblr.com/)) for her editing help and amazing companion art. This story poured out of me in about 6 weeks, so thank you for helping me polish it into something readable these last 4 months. 
> 
> Note that this story contains some period-specific violence and gore.

One

* * *

Harry draws a deep breath. The forest air is thick with dew, autumn yarrow, and the feeling of someone watching him.

He murmurs another finding charm, presses a foxglove to his lips and lets it fall. But it remains motionless on the damp grass, not even a twitch of effort to point to whomever might be lurking just beyond Harry’s field of vision.

He picks the herb up to tuck back inside his basket of ingredients. Maybe it’s just the tension he’s been carrying in the back of his mind for months now, growing heavier each day as Samhain draws closer. The harvest festival looms only a few weeks away, and with it the night in which the veil between Earth and the Otherworld thins, and spirits, ghouls, and demons traverse the Night Bridge and walk among the living.

It’s not an ordinary Samhain, either. Harry worries because this is the Seventh Samhain in the cycle, and the sinister feeling of foreboding hasn’t stopped gnawing at him since six full moons ago. The Seventh Samhain from the last cycle still haunts him, all these years later. He relives it on nights when the air is sharp with the raw cold of the first frost, when the moon is full and so bright that it blots out the stars and casts shadows in the forest and in his mind, memories and nightmares clawing from the darkness.

Once, Samhain had been a happy occasion for him. He'd been born beneath the harvest moon, almost twenty-one years ago, on another Seventh Samhain. He and the rest of the family would excitedly await for the veil to thin, for, although the power of otherwordly beings gathered to a new pitch, so too did the magic of the Styles witches. From a young age, Anne had allowed him to help with the potions, the containing spells, the ward charms that insulated their inn and the rest of the village from the night walkers, repelling them to pass over the village unharmed.

But everything changed six Samhains ago. Now the Seventh Samhain is a little more than three weeks away. Harry snips another foxglove and places it in his basket, stopping to study the contents. Besides the foxglove, he has several bouquets of crocuses and dahlias, a long strand of ivy, and some yew kindling for brewing the baneberry potion that he sometimes slips into the unwitting blacksmith’s drink to ease his burns and blisters. He just needs a bit more sage; Anne had asked for him to replenish the stock she used to protect the inn from bad spirits. After that, he should head back. He tries not to leave the village for more than a few hours lest he arouse suspicion. He doesn’t know what the villagers might do if they suspected the innkeeper and her son were witches, and he shudders to think about what would happen if they found out.

A grove of sage grows a quarter of a mile down Stutter’s Hill, so Harry turns away from the foxglove and finds himself staring down the sleek shaft of an arrow into the narrowed eyes of a huntsman holding a drawn bow aimed directly at his nose.

Harry yelps in surprise, his hand automatically seeking the ward-charmed crystal at his left wrist. A thousand thoughts shoot through his head--why didn’t the foxglove detect the bowman? Should he risk revealing his magick and retaliate? --but before he can decide, the man lowers his bow and takes a step back to study him.

Heart still pounding, Harry reluctantly releases the charm at his wrist and stares back. Sleek deerskin leather covers the man from heel to shoulder.. His worn boots reach halfway up his calves, his broad shoulders fill out a woollen blouse beneath a leather vest. Harry can see an axe strapped to his back and a broadsword sheathed at his belt. His gauntleted hands hold the notched bow and arrow, and his face holds a quizzical look.

“Does everyone in Mercia dress as strangely as you?”

The man's voice is deep and embellished by a strong accent Harry recognizes as from somewhere probably south and most likely strange. Disarmed by the innocence of the question, he dumbly looks down at himself, fingering the hem of his faded purple tunic.

“I-” he stammers, still shaken and caught off guard, before blurting out “My mother made them for me.”

He’s not quite sure what made him babble besides the fear, but it’s out there now, and the stranger’s look grows even more befuddled. It’s true; Anne spent the better part of a month stitching the gold hem around Harry’s lavender tunic for his twentieth naming day, and the cladagh brooch fastening his green cowl about his neck is another ward charm from her magick arsenal. The yellow cowskin trousers he dyed himself with a hollyhock potion he found in one of her runed spellbooks.

If Harry achieves anything by oversharing, it’s that the stranger clearly decides that he’s not a threat, because the huntsman removes the arrow from its notch. Guarded, Harry watches as the man reaches behind him to tuck the arrow into the quiver strapped to his back beside the axe. “How far is the village?” he asks. “Glenfallow? Is that where you’re from?”

The hunstman speaks slower now, drawing out each syllable, as if their brief interaction has led him to believe that Harry is somewhat slow.

Harry's lingering disorientation dissolves into indignation at the hunter’s condescension--it's not _his_ fault that the huntsman startled him and nearly gave him a heart attack. “I’m not a simpleton. You surprised me,” he snaps defensively. He points accusingly to the bow still clutched in the huntsman’s hands. “Do you often go around pointing that thing at strangers?”

The hunter raises his eyebrows and laughs, as if Harry has referenced an old joke between good friends. He pats his bow with one hand, making a slapping sound of hard flesh on wood. “That’s the idea, actually.”

Harry feels the color rise to his face as he realizes the man's purpose. A mercenary. That explains the excess of weaponry fastened to the man’s body. “Who are you here to kill?”

The man’s laughter fades into a smirk. “You really aren’t a simpleton, are you? Quick on the draw.”

There's no humor in Harry's hard voice when he responds, “I know a killer when I see one.”

Harry made a vow, seven Samhains ago, that he’d never try to harm another being. Another human, rather. Or humanoid. Sometime his witchcraft called for the blood of a raven, or the eye of newt, or the bone of a goat. But ever since that night, he knew he would only use his magick for healing and for aid. No more destruction. No more killing. Harry’s hands curl into fists, disliking this man more every second. _How_ had his foxglove not divined the presence of this killer?

The mercenary’s eyes darken. A shadow crosses his face.

“I’m not a mercenary, if that’s what you mean,” he says grimly. “You needn’t worry about yourself or your family. I’m a hunter.”

He slings his bow over his shoulder and pulls out a dagger. Tied to the hilt is a leather strap threaded through several cherry-sized stones. The huntsman runs his thumb and forefinger over the stones and looks up at Harry with a wry smile on his face. A chill runs down Harry’s spine, and he knows what the stranger’s going to say just before he says it: “I hunt witches.”

* * *

Two

* * *

Liam knows that the innkeeper’s son dislikes him. He won’t go so far as hate, since Harry doesn’t seem capable of anything stronger than stirring the soup cauldron or, more importantly, rolling a half-full keg of mead into place behind the inn’s serving counter. Hate is definitely too strong a word. Annoyed, maybe. Disapproving, definitely.

But Liam doesn’t concern himself with the intractable approval of the innkeeper’s son. He’s here for a job, not to fraternize. In fact, if there’s one thing he’s learned from his travels since he’s picked up his bow and his sword, it’s that making friends with the locals only makes his job more complicated. And Liam has never liked complicated.

He’s here for a job, spelled out readily in the promissory bounty parchment tucked into his breast pocket, signed by the Sheriff of Mercia himself: rid the hamlet Glenfallow of the monster that’s plagued the town for the last seven years. A hefty reward, too: a hundred pounds a year, less any further lives lost, and a nominal title as Thane of Mercia. So Liam does his best to ignore the ire of the inkeeper’s son, and resolves to keep himself out of the inn as much as possible so he doesn’t overstay his welcome. If there had been another inn, he would have happily chosen there to lay his head instead, but the small village of Glenfallow only has the one, and so Liam pays for a week’s stay in one of the private rooms in the inn’s loft.

The rest of the staff there seem nice enough. The innkeeper herself, a delicate woman with gentle features, sees him to his upstairs room and offers to start the fire in the grate to warm the room for his stay. There’s a young barmaid, Sophia, who’s as comely as she is coy and who brings him a thick goose-down blanket to combat the growing chill.

Liam settles in quickly, as he’s learned to do from a life on the road, and makes sure a weapon sits within easy reach from every position in the straw-lined room. He trades his muddied road boots for the walking pair he keeps in his pack and descends to the ground floor. Several circular tables fill inn's the dining room, edged in by a bar counter that runs along the lefthand side, and on the other side by a roaring fireplace that nearly encompasses the entire front wall. The fireplace is separated from the dining space by another low counter, and judging from the quantity of pots, pans, and stirring utensils, it doubles as the inn's kitchen.

There he meets the only blacksmith, Niall, delivering a large batch of cutlery to the inn's kitchen stores. He's a solid-looking blonde with sturdy arms and an even sturdier smile, and offers to give Liam a tour of the village, to which he accepts gratefully.

Glenfallow isn’t large, Liam learns. Less than three hundred villagers, with ramshackle cottages spread out like spokes of a wheel from the village center. Besides the inn and the blacksmith, Glenfallow boasts a miller, a baker, a cobbler, a thresher, a fishmonger, and the odd farmer selling cabbage and onions within the village square. There’s also a house for spinsters, the widows who work for their keep, almost a dozen of them filling the house at the end of the main quarter. It takes a mere twenty minutes for Liam and Niall to circle the perimeter and find themselves back in front of the inn on the main road out of town.

“Let me buy you a drink,” Niall says as he pushes open the door.

Liam shakes his head. “I pay my own way,” he says firmly. He doesn’t mind, either; witch hunting gives him gold to spare from grateful townsfolk past, and his only expense is food and ale.

“Nonsense. How else can we welcome you to our town?” Niall gestures to one of the cozy tables near the fire burning in the immense hearth, and Liam finally agrees.

From force of habit, he pulls out the chair with its back to the wall and slides into the seat, keeping one eye on the door. “You were born here, then?”

Niall waves to Harry, motioning for two drinks. Liam watches the innkeeper’s son scowl and then turn around to locate two tankards and the barrel of mead. Niall turns back to Liam. “Everyone was born here. No one ever leaves. Not until now…”

He trails off, and Liam doesn’t prompt him to finish. He's sure that Niall knows why Liam’s here; he’s sure most of the inhabitants of Glenfallow do. Liam doesn’t have to remind him of the deaths plaguing the small town, of the Sheriff's reward for whoever stops the villagers from vanishing without a trace. Liam wonders if Niall knows any of the victims, or if only the town pariahs are disappearing. He'd seen enough from Niall's tour that, as the blacksmith, he's a valued member of the village. And based on the eyes of the young ladies that followed them, Niall is twice as friendly as he is needed. Maybe after a few drinks, Liam will press the blacksmith for more details. Know the victims, know the killer, Liam has learned.

But it’s too early to press now. Niall falls silent and he glances sidelong at Liam, who feels the faint heat of suspicion from the blacksmith’s pale eyes. He’s used to a certain amount of mistrust, especially in towns in dire enough straights to need his blade and bow. Liam nods once and gives what he hopes is a sympathetic grimace. The ominous silence ends when Harry arrives with two tankards.

“Thanks, mate.” Niall offers two shillings and a grateful smile; Harry glances at the coins only briefly before giving them both a reproachful look and stalking off without a word.

Liam watches his retreating back and has to remind himself that he doesn’t care why Harry dislikes him. He refocuses on the drinks and lifts his own to toast, eager to stave off the blacksmith’s wariness. “To life?”

“To steel.” The blacksmith affirms and raises his tankard with a newly-bright grin and clinks it against Liam’s.

“Hear, hear.”

They both drink deeply. Liam’s eyes follow Harry over Niall’s head, watching as he reaches up to light the torches above the doorway. The hem of his tunic lifts up, and Liam glimpses spatters of black against pale hip bones.

“Where were you born?” Niall asks, interrupting Liam’s shrewd gaze.

Liam blinks and softens his scrutinizing expression with a smile. “Town called Wolverhampton, south of here.” He takes another sweet sip of mead. “Ever been?”

“Never left Glenfallow,” Niall admits, a tang of bitterness in his voice. “Wanted to squire for the Sheriff of Mercia -- closest thing we have to a Lord around here -- but me da died when I was ten, so I had to go into smithing to support Mum. And here I am.” Niall shrugs, not so much self-pityingly as pragmatically.

Liam nods, doing the mental math to calculate that Niall's father died well before the recent deaths that brought him here. “My pa died when I was a lad, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Vampire coven.”

Liam’s said it so many times now, it doesn’t shred his throat to choke out like it used to. He’s started to forget his own, private, thoughts about it, thoughts he holds close to his chest and rarely airs out for his own perusal, much less for the casual scrutiny of every townsperson he’s met since then, in a dozen towns, over a dozen years. Explaining how he came into witch hunting. The rawness has long since faded, unlike the silver amulet his father gave him on his twelfth birthday. A simple medallion on a leather strap, Liam wears it around his neck and beneath his leather armor, close to his heart, to remind himself why he carries the sword and the bow.

Niall sucks in air in a sympathetic gasp and winces. “Is that what that’s from?” he asks, nodding to the hilt of Liam’s sword.

Liam looks down, then runs a finger over the gleaming ivory fangs embedded in the handle. “No, this is from a nasty vampire from Sussex. I didn’t take one off the ones that…” he stutters and starts again. “I didn’t get anything.”

He would never want a trophy from the vampires that killed his parents, but he’s not sure how to explain that to a blacksmith who’s probably never killed anyone. He gazes into his mead, dark thoughts swirling unbidden in his head. Killing is such an intimate act. He’s picked up a keepsake or two from particularly hard-fought wins, but he's never wanted to share exactly why. He tells himself that he likes everyone knowing he's good at his job, egotistical as it may seem. But that's not the reason. Ever since he started, he's tried his best to forget every life he’s ever ended.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to forget. Especially when his work brings him to a new town, to new people that have never met a witch hunter before. “What’s the worst fight you’ve ever been in?” Niall asks eagerly, leaning forward with shining eyes.

Liam hesitates again, pausing to gather his thoughts. As if The Fight hasn’t burned itself into every fiber of his brain, as if his nightmares don’t return every full moon. “This one,” he says slowly, pointing to a larger fang threaded into the leather of his vest, just above his heart. “A werewolf, from Dunshire.”

Niall leans closer to study the canine tooth. “That's a big one. Must a'been a good brawl.” _Must be a better story_ , Niall’s keen eyes say.

Nodding, Liam rolls his sleeve back to show an angry slash on his left forearm. “Took a piece of me, too.” Took a piece, in more ways than one, but he stops before he says something he regrets. He’s not sure what makes him feel the need to share The Fight. Maybe it’s the blacksmith’s eager eyes, or the unusually mellow mead in his cup, or the warmth of the fire that reaches the tips of his fingers. Usually he’s ten drinks in before he opens the memory. He’s practically inviting the nightmares back in.

“So, do you think our Vandrian is a werewolf?” Liam’s ears prick;

“Vandrian?”

Niall sets his tankard down almost delicately, the jovial facade slipping once more to reveal a worried countenance. “Yeah, that’s what we call it. The Vandrian.” He nods behind him to the front door of the inn that opens to the road and the wood. “The thing out there.”

His voice sounds tighter, and so is the grip clutching the tankard. Liam nods in understanding and then cocks his head thoughtfully. He’s pleased to move on from himself and eager to discuss the reason for his journey. He leans forward and shakes his head confidently at Niall’s question. “Not a werewolf. You’d notice a pattern with the moon cycle. They don’t attack when they’re human.”

He starts when Harry suddenly materializes from behind Niall and drops two plates of turkey legs onto the table between them; Liam hadn’t noticed him walk up. “Your meal,” Harry says primly.

Niall uses his foot to nudge an extra chair outward. “Want to join, Haz?”

“No thank you.” His voice sounds stiff. Liam looks at him curiously. Niall is clearly comfortable with Harry, but Harry’s aversion to Liam is stopping him from meeting Niall’s friendliness.

Niall tries again. “Liam here says it's not a werewolf. What do you think the Vandrian is, out there in the wood?”

Harry stops, turns, and slowly looks back at the pair. Liam tilts his head, jarred by a lethargic reaction so at odds with Niall's burning curiosity. “I think it doesn’t matter. It hasn’t come into the village, and I don’t think it will. We should just let it be.”

Liam blinks in shock. He’s never met a townsperson who didn’t want him to rid them of whatever was cursing them and their home. He opens his mouth to challenge him when the door flies open, making him jerk again.

Three men stride inside, in various stages of farmer dress. Niall lifts a jovial hand and waves them over. “Eoghan, Bressie, Greg. Meet the man of the hour.” He turns back to Liam with a proud grin on his face. “Liam Payne, the witch hunter from Wolverhampton.”

The other men raise their eyebrows and exclaim indistinctly to each other as they approach.; Everyone pushes tables together, pull up chairs, and calls Harry for more drinks.

“Tell them about the werewolf,” Niall urges, and Liam’s goodwill towards the blacksmith's geniality fades. His smile turns wan.

The crowd swells as the night lengthens. More and more drinks appear in Liam’s hand. The noise builds to a droning roar, constant questions fired about his past, his kills, his travels far and wide. After a few hours, the drinks, the crowd, and the day's journey finally take their toll. Exhaustion settles over Liam like a crushing lead blanket. He can barely tell up from down. The last things he remembers are Sophia’s warm hands and shy smile as she bids him softly up the stairs and into her bedroom. That, and the stormy face of the innkeeper’s son glaring up at them in the balcony hallway before Sophia shuts her door, blocking him out.

* * *

Three

* * *

Harry’s still stewing about the huntsman the next day when Louis, the baker, arrives smelling of sweet pastries with the morrow’s bread and a teasing grin. After helping Sophia store the breadfare in the icehouse, he slides into one of the barstools in front of the counter and looks up at Harry. “So. Have you met the witch hunter yet?”

Not in the mood to banter, Harry slams down Louis’ soup harder than necessary and shoves it along the sticky wood toward him. “Yes,” he replies gruffly.

He doesn’t hide anything from Louis, and he doesn’t need to. He and Louis grew up together, shared the same nursemaid, played in the same pens. He’s the only one in the village that knows Harry and Anne’s secret.

Louis picks up his spoon and grins wider at Harry’s frown. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

Harry scowls. “What’s to celebrate? He’ll end up like the others. Fire doesn’t fight fire. Death only brings more death. Besides, he's a dangerous man, and we're better off without him." He knows he doesn't have to remind Louis of what the huntsman would do if he suspected Harry and Anne. He hasn't yet entered the hunstman's room, but he could hear every clank of weaponry as Liam unarmed himself to prepare for bed. Not to mention the reek of oil and metal that wafted in his wake.

Louis picks up his breadloaf and dunks it into the hot broth. His nose wrinkles as he takes a thoughtful bite. “Dunno.” He checks over his shoulder; the inn is empty, but Louis lowers his voice anyway. “I know you’ve been thinking about it, too. The last year’s seemed worse than any we’ve had before. Whatever’s out there, it’s stirring.”

Despite himself, Harry looks up from the cauldron of stew. Louis’ head leans towards Harry; his eyes widen earnestly. “It won’t be long ‘til it makes it into the village.”

“It won’t,” Harry argues immediately. He won’t entertain the idea that it can breach the protective boundary that he and Anne work so hard to maintain.

Louis sits back, eyes flashing in annoyance by Harry’s dismissal. “I’m telling you, it’s worse. The Vandrian's getting stronger. You don't think the huntsman can do some good here?"

"You know that I don't," Harry retorts, not hiding the edge in his voice.

"You're so pig-headed sometimes," Louis huffs. He tears a chunk of bread off violently and sops up more stew. "All I'm saying is maybe he can help."

Harry grunts; witches aren't known for being stubborn, but mercenaries definitely are. "Mum and I have shored up the boundary," Harry mutters, eyeing Sophia, who has just re-entered through the back door with the day's cut of dried venison. "We're safe."

"If we're so safe, how come the Branmill twins haven’t been seen in three days?” Louis shoots back, voice sharp.

Harry’s stomach drops He swallows. “Are you certain?”

Louis freezes and shakes his head before stirring his soup again. Harry knows that Louis wasn’t planning to tell him this, only let it slip out to get even with Harry’s sullenness. "Never mind."

"Louis." Harry sets a heavy hand on the countertop. "Three days?"

Miserably, Louis caves. "I wasn't going to tell you because there's nothing you could have done. They bought the last of my applebread I had before they left. I threw in a few day-old stickloaves as a parting gift, hoping it would help.”

Harry turns back to the cauldron of stew and lifts the ladle to stir it, but stops with the ladle halfway into the pot. He stares blankly past it into the burning depths of the coals in the hearth.

“They were dead set,” Louis says, more gently and now tinged with the regret that he succeeded in upsetting Harry. “No one could talk them out of it. Not even you.”

Harry purses his lips. He knows the rest of the town considers him and his mother somewhat pariahs because of their odd habits, but happily tolerates their roles as innkeepers. The town needs a place for visitors to feel welcome, so merchants and trademen can keep up a steady stream of money and supplies in and out of the village. And the Styles’ inn has a reputation for always having a little extra meat, a little warmer fires, a little stronger ale than any of the inns twenty leagues around.

So the villagers don’t ask too many questions when the innkeeper spends every morning walking dutifully around the edge of the village, or when her peculiar son spends a few extra hours in the woods gathering flowers. They smile and shake their heads fondly behind closed doors when Harry confronts--futilely--every man who wants to enter the woods to seek the darkness that curses their town.

At first, it was only one or two people a year, easily blamed on wolves or sheer traveler's misfortune. But after the first few disappearances, family and friends followed after to seek them, only to disappear themselves. In the last seven years, close to two dozen men and women had vanished.

Not always permanently. Sometimes their bodies turned up weeks later, grotesque and desecrated by the shadowbeing that lurked beyond the town’s borders. Harry had managed to only let them see one or two of those; the rest had called to him, the way the Vandrian did, and Harry was able to locate the bodies and bury them properly so that their families didn’t have to know how horrifically their children had been murdered.

But Harry knew. Each one left a scar in his heart, as harshly as if on his skin, and so Harry tried to convince every one of them not to leave, not to pursue the darkness.

Sometimes he was successful. Sometimes he wasn’t. Least likely to heed him were the young, brash men that went forth from the village laden with weapons and hubris, determined to prove themselves.

Young men just like the huntsman--hired killers that Harry wanted nothing to do with. The Styles witch line held all humanoid life sacred, even the werekin, even the lesser demons. He could not forgive a mercenary who exploited society’s outcasts, not while he, Harry, was one of them.

No, the witch hunters were a different breed entirely. All the arrogance of the young male villagefolk, with none of the local knowledge, not to mention a complete disregard of the town’s safety to boot. He wouldn’t approach a witch hunter for the obvious reason that he didn’t want to end up a good luck charm stitched into a leather vest, but also because witch hunters didn’t deserve his caution.

“You said they left three days ago?”

Louis looks up from his stew, and Harry can read the regret in his eyes from having said too much. “You’re not thinking of going after them. It's been three days!”

Harry is already tossing bread, carrots, and apples into a rucksack. “If I don’t, who will?”

“I will.”

From the corner armchair closest to the fireplace, Liam stands up and unsheathes his sword.

Harry has to grab the counter to stop himself from jumping, first from surprise and second at the grating noise of metal on metal. Louis stares open-mouthed between the two of them, and Harry wishes he’d shut it; he looks like an uncouth backwoods villager that travelers laughed about. “No, you’re not,” Harry says firmly.

“It’s what I do,” Liam says just as confidently. “Have you got a weapon? What do you expect to do if you run into this Vandrian fellow?”

Harry’s almost taken aback at Liam’s abrupt questions. “I don’t need a weapon,” he says. “I’m just going to find the twins.”

“Are you going into the wood?” A third voice joins, female, and Harry looks over to see Sophia beside the fireplace, warming the venison. “With Liam? Are you going now?” Her eyes, shining on Liam, feel almost as grating to Harry as the unnatural sound of Liam’s steel.

Setting his jaw, Harry turns back to Liam but before he can open his mouth, Louis joins in, too. “Yes, Harry, won’t you go with the hunstman? As his guide?”

Louis masks his smirk beneath a veil of mock concern, and Harry seethes. Of course Louis would find a way to allay his own guilt and make Harry suffer at the same time.

“Sounds fairly decided, then,” Liam says and shoulders his blade. “I’ll be right along, just need to grab a few supplies from my room.”

He leaves Harry standing behind the bar, clutching his rucksack and smoldering inside. He can’t keep arguing, not with Sophia and Louis as witnesses. It would arouse too much suspicion for him to refuse the help of a man who came to Glenfallow just for this purpose. He knows Louis is trying to keep his best interests at heart.

“You know why I have to go alone,” he says quietly, so that only Louis can hear him.

Louis avoids his gaze, his pale blue eyes seeking elsewhere. “He can help,” Louis mutters. There’s a pause, and only then do Louis’ eyes meet his own. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I do,” Harry says sharply. Sophia has lost interest in waiting for Liam and is watching them curiously, and he drops his voice even lower. “You know I have to.”

Louis doesn’t answer, and Harry, sullen, turns away.

* * *

Four

* * *

Liam squats to study the mud on the ground, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. The damp path reveals several footprints, though the fine rain falling will most likely erase them in a few short hours.

“They went this way?”

A slight sigh sounds above him, too quiet for a normal person to hear but Liam’s trained ear can clearly hear Harry’s exasperation. “Yes.”

Liam knows he shouldn’t provoke Harry further; the innkeeper had accidentally exposed more emotion in that heated exchange in the inn than Liam had witnessed in him at all from the last three days in Glenfallow. Liam knows it’s only because of Sophia and Louis’ wheedling that Harry allowed Liam to join, as one allows a child to tag along an older brother. But Liam puts aside his own irritation at Harry’s condescension and focuses on the task at hand: the sooner he can find and kill the Vandrian, the sooner he can leave the surly innkeeper and sleepy Glenfallow behind.

He lowers his head and turns it to the side so that his view is parallel to the ground, but he still can’t detect anything noticeable about the footprints in the mud.

“You’re sure it’s this way?”

Harry impatiently shifts his weight to his other foot and adjusts the rucksack over his shoulder. “I’m sure.” Liam turns his head to stare up at him, now studying the aggrieved lines on Harry’s face. There’s determination there, behind the annoyance. He doesn’t doubt that Harry believes he is sure. He just doesn’t trust the lack of explanation.

As if he’d read Liam’s thoughts, Harry tilts his head down the path, away from the village. “There’s an abandoned homestead a couple hours’ walk this way. They used to play there. I’m sure they would have made camp inside it, and we can pick up their trail from there.”

Liam nods, appreciative of Harry finally giving up a logical explanation and impressed at Harry’s tracking instincts. He gestures with his sword-arm down the path. “Lead the way.”

It takes a few minutes for the sounds of the village to die away, for the blacksmith’s hammer to recede into silence. The rain softens as the wood thickens, and even though there’s a coming chill Liam feels quite content, with a full belly and a clear head, once more on the hunt. In fact, he feels almost cheerful, so much so that he decides to tempt Harry with conversation.

“You know,” he says—Harry jumps at the noise— “I lost count of the number of ales I had last night, and I don’t feel a thing this morning.”

Harry doesn’t reply, so Liam plows on. “Usually I’d still be lying on my bed, cursing the daylight. What sort of ale do you brew here?”

At last Harry turns his head to look at him, though he doesn’t slow his pace. “It’s the only one I know how to make.”

“What’s in it?”

Harry turns back to face forward, clearly annoyed again, and ticks off ingredients in a dry, monotonous voice. “Barley, water, yeast, some spices for the flavour.”

“What sort of spices?”

“Dog violet. Nutmeg. I dunno, whatever’s around for the season. I just follow the recipe from my mum, and her mum before that.”

The repetition of mothers strikes Liam’s curiosity. “Your mum? Is your father around?”

All of a sudden, Harry whirls, startling Liam who has his sword halfway out of his sheath before he catches himself. His gaze flits to Harry’s hands, which are curled into fists, then back up to his eyes, which are angry slits of jade fury. There’s a long pause, and then Harry tightly says “It’s just me and Mum.”

He turns back to stride forward, and Liam nods and follows in silence, resolved to keep his mouth shut from now on. If the innkeeper insists on making this uncomfortable for the both of them, so be it.

Silence falls as they walk deeper into the wood. Liam has spent the better part of ten years hunting, but this forest seems different any before. The quiet is almost oppressive. He has developed a walk that makes him almost silent, but it feels like the trees are absorbing any extra sound. He can’t even hear Harry’s footfalls, and it surprises him that an innkeeper can walk so stealthily.

They reach the homestead a little after noon. At one point, it must have been a beautiful cottage, constructed of carved stone and a thatched roof. But age has ravaged it, and more than one fire has burned it from the inside. The stones on the inside are completely scorched, and the black soot and smoke stains now crept out the windows and doorways like a skeletal moss.

Inside the shell of the cottage, Harry nudges an empty burlap sack with his foot. Liam sinks to his knees to examine it. It hasn’t been there long, still crisp about the edges except for the corner nibbled off by vermin. Liam lifts it to his nose.

“Apple,” he says, and hands it to Harry.

Taking the sack by the corner, Harry lifts it gingerly to his nose and stares blankly at Liam.

“The baker. He said he gave them applebread,” Liam explains.

Harry hands back the burlap and turns away dismissively. “I heard. I was there.”

Liam rolls up the sack and unslings his own rucksack from his shoulder to stuff it inside. He’s irritated, despite himself, at how Harry curtness successfully gets under his skin. He straightens up to see Harry standing in the middle of the homestead’s clearing, cocking his head this way and that as if listening.

“Have I done something to upset you?” he asks, trying once again to act civil

Harry doesn’t miss a beat and retorts, “You mean, besides try to kill me?”

Liam winces and smiles in apology. “Sorry about that, but it’s my job to be suspicious, and I didn’t know who you were.”

Harry rests his hand against a tree trunk and stares up at its branches. Liam looks up, but he can neither hear nor see anything in its foliage. “In case you didn’t figure it out yet, I dislike your job more than I dislike you.”

Liam’s smile turns sardonic, then slips into a grimace. “It’s just a job. Same as you. You offer one service. I offer another.”

Folding his arms over his chest, Harry turns back to face Liam, his face stony. “They are not the same. _We_ are not the same. I don’t murder.”

Liam blinks. Suddenly he is uncomfortably aware of the weight of his bow, his sword, his axe, and his quiver. “Listen, I only kill when asked--”

“Mercenary.” Harry spits out the word like poison on his tongue.

“I only kill when they’re a danger to society!” Liam snaps back, raising his voice to defend himself. “I don’t hunt criminals, I don’t hunt thieves, I don’t hunt humans. I hunt vampires, ghouls, wights, poltergeists, witches--”

“You said yourself,” Harry interrupts, his voice quivering with suppressed rage. “I heard you. You said, yourself, that werewolves were human most of the month. And you killed him anyway. And you keep his fang as a trophy to boast of your murder.”

Liam stops, speechless. He can feel his heart thudding against his father’s silver medallion, and above that, the werewolf fang in his vest. “You don’t understand--”

“They went this way,” Harry interjects again, using his chin to point to a small deer run leading to their left. Without a word he stalks off, leaving Liam standing alone in the burned-out shell of a house.

After a few seconds he manages to get his legs to move again, although he’s still reeling from Harry’s accusations. If Harry had seen-- if he had half an inkling-- if he knew anyone involved-- every thought fails Liam before it fully forms, stifled by indignance.

He breaks into a half-jog to catch up to Harry, to demand the innkeeper correct his assumptions, when he realizes that he doesn’t know how Harry knew which way to go. And before he can call out to ask, he turns a corner and slams into something hard.

Liam staggers but remains upright, drawing his sword before he realizes he’s collided with Harry’s back. Harry stumbles few steps forward at Liam’s impact, but immediately backpedals to stand beside Liam, and it’s a few seconds before Liam realizes that Harry’s hand is digging painfully into Liam’s shoulder, because Liam, too, sees what Harry sees, and all sensation leaves his body.

They’re in a clearing, but they aren’t the only ones there.

Two men are affixed to two different trees, arms wide, upside down. Their eyes are open, but Liam knows, instantly, that they’re dead. Rotting flesh, maggots, the lot of it. Their arms are spread, and Liam can see they are each stretched out on enormous tree boughs, one the length of their body and one the length of their armspan, so that the men are spread upon upside down crosses. With a horrified jolt, Liam takes in the nails poking out of their hands and feet, and realizes that the grotesque display is a crucifixion

Almost as soon as he registers the sight, a foul stench cloys at his nostrils: the overripe, gangrenous smell of death. He's smelled it before, in houses abandoned by vampires, in homes where demons left their dead. But this, somehow, feels even worse; it's as if the air itself is rotten, not just the corpses. He feels Harry stumble beside him, retching. Liam doesn’t move. Who could have done this? Or rather, _what_?

Then Harry is lurching toward the bodies on unsteady knees, and Liam hurries forward to drag him back.

“No,” Harry mumbles, then louder and cracked. “ _No!_ ”

“Harry, don’t touch them, they’ve been dead a few days--” Now that they’re mere meters away, Liam sees that there’s no dried blood on their hands where the nails enter; they were crucified after their death. That fact stuns him further--this is just macabre decoration. Someone wanted the bodies to be found, wanted to leave a warning-- and he loses his grip on Harry, who stumbles forward again and reaches the closest body.

“Harry, we need to get out of here,” Liam says thickly, standing up to grab Harry’s arm and pull him away. If whoever did this wanted the bodies to be found, it means they were waiting for them.

“This is wrong, this can’t--” Harry falters, and pushes the first cross over.

The body and the cross it lies on fall with a sickening thud that Liam knows he’ll remember for a long time. Harry’s on his knees scrabbling at the man’s hands, trying to pull the nail out.

“Harry!” He yanks at Harry’s shoulders Harry topples backward on top of him, and in the jumble of limbs Liam loses his grip, and Harry bounces right back up.

He’s working with a delirious fervor. “This is wrong; this cannot be,” Harry repeats, louder this time. He gives up pulling out the nails and staggers to the other cross, pushing it over as well.

Liam watches numbly from the ground, the autumn leafs strangely dry beneath his now-sweaty palms. It’s almost as if Harry is possessed, trying to pull the bodies from the cross. He knows he can’t stop Harry in this mania, so he slowly crawls towards the other body, closes his eyes to a squint, and starts using his dagger to carefully withdraw the nails.

After a few minutes, Liam has the freed nails piled y in front of him. Harry finishes moments after and stands up, then backs away. His hands are covered in grime and carrion that Liam doesn’t want to think about, and he’s staring wide-eyed at the scene as if it was his first time seeing it, as if waking from a dream.

“We have to go,” he whispers.

“Don’t you want to bring the bodies?” Liam asks. Not that he wants to, but he assumes that’s why Harry was so frantic about pulling them off the crosses.

Harry shakes his head hard, his hair flapping back and forth. “No. We can’t let their family see them like this. We have to leave them.”

Completely baffled by Harry’s erratic actions, but chalking it up to shock, Liam stands up and wipes his hands on his trousers, then follows Harry’s quick strides back up the deer run towards the homestead.

Except when they reach the homestead, Harry stops again, looks once at Liam, and turns back. “I have to put them to rest.”

“Why? What?” Liam’s growing more frustrated by Harry’s mounting capriciousness. “Harry, we need to leave.hatever put them there is going to come back.”

“It’s their family’s custom,” Harry insists, already retreating back into the woods.

Liam takes a few halfhearted steps after Harry and then stops. His eyes narrow as he watches Harry’s figure fade into the trees, and he thinks he sees Harry pull something out of his rucksack as he turns the corner.

He’ll give him three minutes, and then Liam’s leaving, and Harry can come with him or die out here and end up strung upside down, for all he cares. He starts counting to three hundred, but barely a minute passes before Harry is back, padding up to him across the leafy forest floor, his wildness dissolved to a strange placidity. “Let’s go,” he says, voice calm and bereft of any prior franticness, and without waiting he strides ahead.

Liam raises his eyebrows at the complete change that has come over Harry, and finds himself once more having to jog to catch up.

The image of the crucified men is still burned into his mind. After a half hour’s hard pace, when Liam finds himself breathing a little easier at the distance between themselves and the decaying bodies, he reaches out to tap Harry’s elbow. “So was that him?”

Harry pulls his elbow out of Liam’s reach and doesn’t slow his pace. “Was that who?”

Liam’s had enough of Harry dodging every direct question, with an attitude to boot. He holds his tongue for almost a minute until Harry notices the lack of follow up to his initial question, and turns his head. Then Liam strikes, throwing his body forward and sliding his legs out to catch the back of Harry’s knees. Caught off guard, Harry keels backward, and in a flash Liam is back upright, standing over Harry with his sword drawn and pointing at Harry’s exposed throat.

“Listen to me. I know you don’t agree with what I do.” He’s breathing hard from the exertion but keeps his voice even. “But I came because the Sheriff of Mercia offered a bounty for whoever stops whatever it is that’s killing the people of Glenfallow. So here I am. And clearly you know more about this--this _thing_ , than anyone else, ‘cause you’re always chasing after people going after it. So unless you want to continue impeding an agent of the Sheriff, I suggest you start cooperating.”

Harry looks shocked at the fact that he’s on his back, much less with a blade at his throat. He raises his arms to push the sword away but Liam merely nudges the tip closer to his neck until it’s touching skin. He speaks slowly, pressing the sword a fraction closer with each syllable.

“Answer. The question.”

“All right, all right,” Harry gasps out. Liam notices his right hand is holding his left wrist, or rather, the bracelet he wears there. “Let me up, and I’ll tell you-- tell you what I know.”

Liam pauses, keeping his sword flush with Harry’s skin, weighing the earnestness in Harry’s voice with the outrage in his face. Liam’s instincts win out and he withdraws his sword and offers Harry a hand up.

Ignoring Liam’s outstretched hand, Harry rubs his neck and pushes himself to his feet. “All right,” he repeats gingerly when he sees Liam’s sword is still drawn. “All right. yes. That was the Vandrian.”

Liam nods, then wrinkles his nose. “Are they always like that? The bodies?”

Harry shakes his head slowly. “It’s always different. I’ve only found them about half the time. But it’s always something different, something gruesome.”

“What else does he do?”

Harry makes a grunting noise. “Gruesome enough to curl your hair. Why d’you need to know specifics?” He sneers. “Need ideas?”

“I’m asking because it gives me a clue to his abilities,” Liam shoots back. “He’s big enough to crucify dead weight, and prop grown men up upside down. What else has he done?”

Harry runs two hands through his hair and collects his thoughts before answering. “Fine. Three years ago, I found a few hanging from trees. At least, their bodies. Never found the heads. And another one… he was split open along his back, so that his skin would look like angel wings.”

Liam wipes the bottom of his chin with his free hand, studying Harry’s disgusted expression. “Something performative. He wants you to find them.”

He doesn’t answer, only stares back at Liam and his eyes are jade pools whose depths Liam can’t probe. Liam tries again. “Have you seen him?”

Shaking his head wordlessly, Harry gestures behind him. “I’ve only ever seen the bodies.”

“So, what _is_ the Vandrian? It has to be a witch. Vampires aren’t this obsessed with appearance and drama. It’s too sophisticated for a werewolf or a wight. It has to be a witch.”

Harry merely shrugs. “You’re the witch hunter, aren’t you? Isn’t it to your _job_ to know?”

By now Liam expects this amount of rancor from Harry, and brushes it off with little regard. “One more question. If it’s always different, why did you say it was wrong?”

It’s Harry’s turn to blink in surprise, and his expression softens into one of confusion. “What?”

“Back there. When we saw the bodies. You said it was wrong. How could it be wrong, if it’s always different?”

Even though Harry opens his mouth, it’s a few seconds before sound comes out. “I just… it’s wrong, isn’t it? Just, in general… they don’t deserve to be up like that… they deserve a proper death, and a proper resting place.”

Liam can’t shake the feeling Harry is hiding something from him, maybe something to do with him going back to bodies. But he’s already pressed Harry enough, and knows that he won’t get anywhere if the only way he can get information is through threats. He simply nods, sheaths his sword, and stands back to allow Harry to pass. “Thank you,” he says formally.

In response, Harry sweeps past him with his hand still rubbing at his throat. He takes a few steps and then stops to face Liam again. “One more thing. Don’t ever threaten me again.”

Raising his eyebrows, Liam sinks his weight onto his heels and lets his hand rest comfortably against the hilt of his sword. “Like I said, if it’s the only way to get you to cooperate--”

“Only a murderer would think that’s the only way to get me to talk,” Harry shoots back. His gaze is fiery and flits between Liam’s face and his sword. “Don’t do it again.”

Liam bites back the question in his throat, “ _or what?_ ” Harry has an inch or two on him, but he’s all knees and elbows and Liam doubts his ability to hurt so much as a gadfly. “I’ll promise, if you promise,” he offers diplomatically.

Harry says nothing but pivots on one heel and marches forward without a word, his leather clad feet again making too little noise on the leafy down. Liam follows.

* * *

Five

* * *

Harry stands alone in his room, his hands pressed to his face. He breathes deeply and inhales the scent of rosemary, sage, and anise seed. He is safe here, he reminds himself. No blackness from the wood can permeate the barrier he and Anne crafted. Outside, the rain pelts down harder, and he lowers his hands to ease open the window and allow its sound and smell to waft into the room.

He pulls his damp tunic off and hangs it on the back of a chair, which he then nudges towards the fire with his foot to dry faster. His shoes come next, and he exchanges his cowhide breeches for a fresh, dry set that Anne has left folded on his dresser.

Then he stands in the middle of the room, shirtless, and breathes deeply again, focusing his mind on the here, the now, and not the gaping dead corpses of the Branmill twins.

Faintly, he feels the tattooed tendrils at his hips begin to grow warm. He opens his eyes and watches as they lighten from black to a mossy green, then separate from his body and wind gradually up his arms. He lifts his chin and breathes deeper while the cleansing vines coil up his body. They reach the butterfly on his stomach and it, too, lightens in color until it’s a tawny ash, and it alights from his skin to flutter towards the window. It settles on the potted snapdragon and drinks deeply from it. The vines continue their journey up his torso and the sparrows burst forth from his chest, one after the other, taking wing and settling on the mantle, side by side.

Inside his head, he hears the rest of his collection coming alive. The clang of a sailing ship. The call of an eagle. The beat of a heart. All fixing him here, in his room, in the inn with his mother in the village he protects.

There’s a soft knock on the door. Harry looks over at the door, which emits a pale lavender glow: Anne.

“Just a moment.”

He refocuses himself, and closes his eyes. The swallows flit across the room and land on each shoulder, then hop off to melt back against his skin. The butterfly flutters back noiselessly and melds against his stomach once more. The tendrils retreat, snaking back down his arms and chest until they shrink to their normal size and blacken against his hips. Harry takes a deep breath and turns around. “Come in.”

Anne steps inside, all cotton and lemon sachet and long, flowing skirts. Her hair is done up in a bun as it is when she’s concentrating, and Harry can smell the newt and beehive husk from her Soothing Potion.

Harry says nothing in greeting, only tugs a new tunic over his head.

“Bad news?” she asks softly.

She proffers a wooden cup and he accepts it once he's straightened his tunic and fastened a loose belt around his hips. He nods once, but doesn't meet her eyes as he drinks from the potion. A warm hum fills his ears and he can feel his heartbeat slow from his own meditation. It helps, but he knows there's no filling the emptiness inside him from seeing the twins. The words feel almost as hollow as he does: “We were days too late.”

She sinks heavily onto the bed, which rolls out its covers and pillows on their own. “What does the huntsman know?”

Almost unconsciously, Harry rubs the front of his neck where Liam dug his sword in. “The bodies were… they raised a lot of questions.” He lowers his hand, then at last meets his mother's eyes. “I only told him enough to make him satisfied. He thinks… he thinks the Vandrian is a witch.”

Anne’s eyes widen with concern, but she composes herself quickly, laces her fingers together in her lap, and speaks not looking at Harry but at the panel of his cupboard level with his knees. “Do you think he can help?”

Harry lets out a derisive harrumph. “How can he?” His voice drops, as do his shoulders, into a tone of hopeless defeat. “How can anyone?”

“Harry,” Anne stands and crosses the room in one stride to cup Harry’s chin in both hands. “We’ll find a way.”

He gestures despondently around the room, at the wards, charms, and herbs he uses to field the magical barrier. “All we can do is protect. I can’t stop it. I can’t stop them.” He looks to the west, to the rest of the village. He can’t help it; he refuses to allow Anne to comfort him. Not when he can still picture the gaunt, dead eyes of the twins every time he closes his own.

When he finally looks back at Anne he senses a shift, a melancholy within her. “I have one idea,” she says. “A spell. I’ll need your help to cast it.” Harry nods emphatically until she stops him with a hand to his forehead. “But it needs dittany.”

“Dittany?” Harry repeats in confusion. He’s searched high and low for the cave fungus over the last few summers. “We haven’t had dittany for years.”

“I know. I need to go and get it. Your aunt Hortense, in Durham, will have some. And I'll bring her back with me. The three of us will finish this."

Harry blanches. “Samhain’s twelve days away,” he says, his voice catching. “Will you take the broom?”

She shakes her head, and he feels the sadness welling forth. “It's too conspicuous, for two old spinsters to be traveling by night.”

He nods, swallowing tightly to control the fear that’s blossomed in his gut. “What if something happens while you’re gone?”

“Harry.” She reaches to her tiptoes and kisses Harry’s forehead. “The boundary will hold. I’ll be back before Samhain.”

He grips her arms. “At least tell me what the spell is.”

“It’s conjuration magick,” she says quietly.

Harry’s eyes widen. “The dittany…”

“I’ll need your help containing it. It’s the last thing I can think of. Something bigger, something even more powerful than the Vandrian. If we can contain it--”

“Then maybe we can break it apart.” He swallows again, and nods.

She kisses his forehead again. “I’ll leave right away.”

“All right.” His throat sticks and he watches helplessly as she turns away. He won’t ask her to stay, won’t impede her quest. He hangs his head as she pads softly from the room and shuts the door quietly behind her. He wishes he could go in her stead, but he knows he can’t leave Glenfallow.

This is Harry's burden. He has to stay.

* * *

“Ready?” Louis calls out from the loft, his voice muffled by the veritable mountains of hay and oak barrels around him.

“Not yet!” Harry shuffles to roll a casket of ale out of the way and into a secure spot near the door of the barn.

“Once you say so, I’m going to drop it.”

Harry looks up to see the rim of another ale casket hovering at the edge of the loft. “All right.” He wipes his hands on his trousers and spies an empty ale bottle on the floor, in his path to the doorway. He reaches down to pick it up and hears Louis’ voice drift down from above.

“All right, drop it?”

Harry tosses the bottle out of harm’s way and looks up hurriedly. “I said don’t drop it!”

“I’m dropping it!”

“No!” Harry rushes to widen his stance below the casket, arms outstretched, and when Louis released the barrel it slides rapidly along the ladder into Harry’s outstretched arms. He just manages to catch the lip before it crashes to the ground, but in his hurry he’s got a terrible grip on it, at the wrong angle, so that it’s teetering against the ladder threatening to topple end over end to the ground.

“I thought you said drop it!” Louis yells from the rafters. Harry grits his teeth and doesn’t respond except to blow a flyaway strand of hair out of his mouth. He tries to slide his fingers up the metal rim to balance the casket better, but he can feel it slowly tilting off balance towards the ground.

And then there’s a heavy hand on the small of his back, almost making him drop the damn thing, and then Liam’s shoulder is up against the length of the barrel and his arms are wrapped around the other end, holding it in place while Harry, panting, lowers his end gently to the ground.

He straightens up, brushing the hair from his face, and meeting Liam’s eyes for the briefest of seconds. “Thanks,” he says, the word slipping out in a puff of breath.

“Any time.”

He’s noticed that Liam has a habit of smiling so hard that it consumes his entire face, and he’s doing it now, much to Harry’s chagrin because he doesn't want to see Liam's smile. He doesn't want to see Liam at all. It's been two days since their return and they've barely spoken a word, which is exactly how Harry wants it. He hadn't wanted Liam to come along in the first place, and not only had he been forced to bring Liam along, but he'd had to give him the slip to cleanse the bodies, and, humiliatingly, found himself flat on his back, sword at his throat and at Liam's mercy.

Louis' voice drifted from above him again. “I did think you said drop it, but that was a jolly good show, mates.”

“You need your ears checked,” Harry rolls his eyes, exasperated.

Liam leans against the barrel, spreading his long fingers out over the top of it. “Need a hand getting this inside?”

“We’re fine,” Harry snaps, fast enough to toe into rudeness, because Liam gets that glazed look that he wears whenever Harry thwarts any attempt at something resembling friendliness.

He pushes off the barrel and shrugs. “Right. I’ll be on my way, then.”

Harry doesn’t watch him leave, remains standing in his same position while he listens to Liam’s boots cross the hall and him open the door.

Louis drops to the ground in front of Harry; a cloud of dust billows out from where his feet impact the dusty floor. He gives Harry a withering look. “You could at least try to be nice, you know. He’s here to help.”

“He already knows how I feel about his ‘help,’” Harry retorts. He hasn’t told Louis anything about their trip, about the way the bodies were hung, desecrated, about how Liam ambushed him to extort the truth, about how Liam suspects a witch. It’s still so raw that he knees the barrel forward so that Louis has to snap downward and grab the end so it doesn’t crush his foot.

He scowls at Harry and then lowers his end to the ground safely so the pair of them can roll it out the door. “He could be a lot worse, you know. Yesterday he helped me unstick the mill wheel.”

“I could have helped you with that,” Harry says crossly. “Simple lubrication charm--”

Louis snorts, and Harry grins back. “Remember that Samhain you tried that on me?”

“Paulie Higgins’ never played a worse game of Blind Man’s Bluff.”

Louis’ laugh rings out through the store room at the memory. “I still hear his squeal in my dreams. He thought he’d grabbed a trout, instead of me.”

Harry chuckles too as they roll the casket down the short path to the inn. “And then you hid a trout in his bed the next week.”

“I did no such thing,” Louis denies. He loses his footwork and swears an oath before righting himself and rejoining Harry’s efforts to push the casket towards the door. “Gods, that was a good Samhain.”

The pair fall silent with the effort of pushing the barrel. The lane is unusually quiet beneath the overcast sky, and Harry knows half of the village must be in the Meadow, readying the preparations for Samhain. “Seventh Samhain, eh?” Louis says. “Gonna be a big one.”

Harry nods. “Speaking of Paulie Higgins, he told me he’s gathering men for a boar hunt tomorrow.”

“Couldn’t pay me to go into the wood this time of year,” Louis said. He shoots a look at Harry. “I’m guessing you found--”

“Yes,” Harry interrupts, and clenches his jaw shut, all mirth vanishing in one fell moment. Louis' mouth thins, but he doesn’t probe further.

They reach the inn and Louis holds the door open while Harry sets his feet against the ground and uses his back to shove the casket inside. “Think this’ll be enough?”

“Not nearly,” Louis answers harshly, and Harry looks up at the sudden change in tone. Louis is staring at something past Harry’s head. He twists to see a heavy traveling wagon up the King's Lane, just on the edge of the forest. There's another one behind it, ambling slowly up to the inn’s gate.

“Looks like minstrels,” Louis says, squinting to make out the brightly-garbed driver of the first wagon. He looks back down at Harry and grins. “We’re gonna need some more mead.”

* * *

If there’s anything good about the unexpected caravan of minstrels and performers, it’s that Harry has no time to worry over Anne’s absence or about the bodies they found in the forest. There’s a dozen of the travelers, and half as many horses, and he hasn’t the time to think of anything besides rolling out hay mats, watering horses, throwing wood on the hearth, pouring ale for empty tankards--the list doesn’t end, not with a raucous baker’s dozen roosting beneath his roof.

He’s grateful Sophia can at least keep their attention once they’re settled in chairs around tables and counterspace in the dining area. They keep her busy, fetching mug after mug of ale to wet throats parched by the road. Harry knows he’ll need Louis’ help restocking the ale caskets once they leave; they’ll run out his whole supply before Samhain if they stay more than a night.

Night has fallen, but so has the rain by the time he leaves Sophia and bundles himself up in his cloak to stable the minstrels’ horses. The horses are bone tired, ill-tempered from the rain, and unwilling to cooperate with Harry tugging at their bridles.

“Come on, you,” he mutters at the lead horse, a particularly stubborn roan. She tosses her head, flecking Harry with more rainwater, and he swears. He pushes back the hood of his cloak to see better, wipes away strands of wet hair, and glares up at the roan’s snorting head. He yanks the rein to pull her head down to his level and presses his left hand against her frothy nose. “ _Tauso-ciúin_ ,” he whispers. A calming spell. She immediately stops resisting, her breathing evens, and her eyes dull their fire. Harry runs his hand along her neck and gently tugs the reins towards the stable, and she at last picks up her heels into a slow walk.

It’s hard work leading an obstinate horse, and Harry is thoroughly soaked after he calms and leads the next horse into the stable. When he reaches the third horse, he’s startled by the figure of a man silhouetted in the inn’s front lantern: tall, broad-shouldered. His hooded cloak conceals his face and gives him a foreboding air.

“Need a hand?”

There’s a weird drop in Harry’s stomach when he recognizes Liam’s voice. “I’ve got it--” he says automatically, but it’s only perfunctory, and cut off abruptly when the horse in front of him stamps and huffs and he has to do a little two-step to prevent the horse from crushing his soaked foot.

Not that it matters, anyway, because Liam’s already pulling off his cloak and reaching up to grasp the reins of the horse nearest to him. Harry does his best to ignore him, ignore the way the rain plasters his thick hair against his face and frames his cheekbones, which shine in the torchlight… He stops to make sure that Liam’s already halfway inside the stable with his horse, so he can murmur another calming spell in the ear of his current charge and follow Liam into the covered shed.

Liam is coaxing his horse into a stall, one hand on its brow and the other on its neck, shushing the horse in gentle tones. Harry backs his into a stall without incident and hurries back into the pouring rain. even if he won’t say it to Liam, he’s glad he doesn’t have to do this six times.

The last two horses are more complacent, as if they realize their kin are now safe out of the rain. Harry doesn’t even need to charm the final one he leads it out of the rain, into the relative warmth of the stable.

There aren’t enough stalls for all six of the horses, so Harry backs his into the farthest stall and presses himself against the clapboard wall while Liam urges his last horse to share it. It’s tight quarters with two horses and two men, and while Liam removes the bridle, Harry’s eyes linger on a birthmark on Liam’s neck he’s never noticed before.

Liam glances over at him to hand him the bridle and smiles gently when he catches Harry staring. Harry quickly looks away, mutters “Thanks,” and pushes out the swinging stall door to collect the bridles from the rest of the horses.

“At least they already took the saddles off,” Liam says conversationally.

“Yes,” Harry keeps his reply curt.

He looks back to see Liam run a hand through his hair and shake the rainwater from it, earning an annoyed hiss from one of the horses that he splashes. Liam laughs and rubs the horse on the nose before turning back to Harry. “I’m going to assume you don’t want any more of my help.”

It's a strange feeling, to be grateful to someone Harry has sworn to avoid, and before he can really consider the offer, his automatic distrust takes over. Harry only gives a brusque head shake and turns away from Liam’s gaze. Somehow Liam's remark, though true, cuts into Harry, because it means that Liam assumes he doesn’t ever want him around.

But maybe this time, he wouldn’t have complained if someone helped hang up the drenched saddle blankets, or toss handfuls of hay into the feeding troughs. Even if that someone happened to be a witch hunter.

But before he can retract his negation, Liam turns away from Harry to reach for his cloak. His blouse is darkened by the rain and it clings tightly to his chest; he's not wearing the leather vest upon which he mounts his armor, only the blouse, his deerskin trousers, and the heavy hunter's boots.

It’s because Anne isn’t here, he tells himself as Liam swings his cloak back over his shoulders and strides past Harry towards the inn. If she were here, he wouldn’t need Liam’s help. Or want it.

* * *

When he finally makes it back inside the inn half an hour later, Sophia is elbows-deep in the washbasin of empty tankards and plates. “You’re back,” she says.

“What, do you need something?” Harry asks, cross. He’s dripping wet from the rain, chilled from the evening autumn air, coated in a layer of hay and horsehair, and desperate for a warm drink and fresh set of clothes.

“No, I’m fine. They were getting rowdy before, until Liam came in.”

Harry sweeps his gaze from the kitchen to the dining area. There are two travelers sitting at the bartop by themselves, but behind them, the rest of the minstrels are encircled around Liam, who’s wrapped in some sort of story. Harry can see his eyes wide, his mouth moving quickly and his hands waving in the air to illustrate his actions, while his audience gazes enraptured. Whatever the story, Harry can’t hear over the noise of Sophia washing the dishes, but whatever the story is ends, and the travelers burst out into uproarious laughter that somehow grates Harry’s ears.

Sophia nods towards the circle. “Been like that since he walked in.”

Harry sniffs in condescension, but there it is again, the same feeling as in the stable. Beneath the grudge, a stab of gratitude, and maybe a little bit of regret.

He chooses to shove it down and stalks into his bedroom. He peels off his soaking clothes, braces his hands over the mantle, and mutters a drying spell. then he runs a cloth over his wet curls while the steam rises off of them. Finally, he emerges once more to help Sophia run the bar.

The party has split into smaller groups now; Harry can see that Louis has arrived and is sitting with the group near the fire, while Liam is shaking hands with the group closer to the door.

He busies himself with a rag and mops up a corner of the bar where ale has spilled across the polished wooden planks and into the shelving below. He has to come around the bar to sop up the majority of it, making him a few extra steps closer to the huntsman’s group, almost within earshot.

He pushes the sheepskin rag more forcefully than necessary over the wood. He feels better now that he's dry, with the stable grime off of his skin, but there's a faintly niggling irritation in the back of his mind that has nothing to do with the approaching Samhain and everything to do with the merry huntsman behind him.

Harry hates how aware he is of Liam. He hates that he can smell the metal of his weapons from across the packed room. He hates that he knows he walks with a faint limp that he tries to hide. He hates that no matter what he does, Liam seems to be in the corner of his vision, surrounded by travelers and the object of every toast.

Tossing the sheepskin aside, Harry hops back over the bar and starts setting clean tankards from Sophia’s washed pile onto the shelves straight. He can feel Liam walking over before he looks up to see him.

He holds several empty tankards in his hands, stacked within each other into two kiltered towers. “‘Lo,” Liam says with a bracing cheerfulness. He sets the cups down on the bar and gestures to Harry’s still-damp hair. “Still coming down out there then?”

Harry’s slightly affronted that they’ve now slid into a level of friendliness that results in small talk, but he does his best to force his lips into a half smile. “Yeah." _You could at least try to be nice_ , Louis voice reprimands in his head. Harry purses his lips andreaches for the tankards. "Hope it clears up by the morning.”

“Yeah?” Liam asks, propping his head up on one elbow as he watches Harry refill the tankards one by one. “Why’s that?”

“Oh, thought Niall might’ve told you. We start preparing for Samhain out in the Meadow. Outside of town, usually about a week out. So hopefully there’s not too much mud.”

Liam nods and pokes his thumb over his shoulder to the group of travelers he’s sitting with. “That’s where this lot are off to. The big one, in York.”

Harry follows the line of Liam’s thumb to watch the group with their heads together, toasting each other to another round. “They’re leaving tomorrow?” he asks. Liam nods, and Harry lets out a slow breath. “Good, then there might be enough mead for the rest of us.”

Raising his eyebrows, Liam starts pulling the now-full tankards towards himself. “You know, I’ve never met an innkeeper that disliked strangers.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say to that. Aside from it being the closest thing to a rebuttal for Harry’s rudeness that Liam’s said yet, Harry is quite sure that Liam’s never met an innkeeper that was a full-blooded witch. Of course he's different from the other innkeepers that Liam's met.

So, why does he feel offended?

He fills the last tankard and slams it on the countertop a little harder than he intended, so that the foamy head sloshes over the rim and onto Harry’s hand. He mutters an oath and glances up at Liam, his face suddenly very hot, only for Liam to smile amusedly at Harry’s mild floundering.

“Thanks,” he says and threads his fingers through the handles until he’s got a grip on all four of them, then turns on his heel and walks away, leaving Harry watching his retreating back, wondering why he’s bothered by a throwaway comment.

Liam doesn’t return to the counter until late into the evening, when the minstrels bed down for the night and it’s just Louis, Liam, Sophia, and Harry. Louis tucks chairs in while Sophia sweeps, and Harry looks up from wiping down the bar to see Liam approaching him, holding an armful of empty cups.

Tossing the washbasin onto the counter, Harry directs Liam to the inside. “You can put them here, thanks.”

_Thanks_ , a word he seems to be saying a lot to the witch hunter. He cringes at the noise of the tankards toppling into the basin and then swings the cleaning bucket back off the counter onto the floor near the back door.

“One more round, for the four of us?” Liam asks, and before Harry can interrupt, he holds out an entire crown towards Harry. The gold glints invitingly.

“Me, I’m parched,” Louis agrees, clambering onto a stool beside Liam. “Soph, love, want a drink?”

Sophia eyes Liam, then nods shyly and moves around the bar to stand next to Harry.

“Here’s to Samhain,” Louis toasts, holding up his tankard.

Harry and Liam exchange a knowing look before he can stop himself. He doesn't know what Liam's thinking, but his own mind flashes back to the odorous clearing in the woods where two men hung crucified upside down.

“To life,” Liam says, a little more solemn than Harry thinks he might have been before their discovery.

Sophia joins in. “To dry roofs and warm beds.”

Harry’s the last to hold his cup up, pausing while he thinks. Louis, Liam, and Sophia all watch him expectantly, and his eyes slide out of focus to make out the oaken timbers of the inn around them, rain still pattering against the threshed roof. He nods. “To Glenfallow.”

They drink deeply, and Louis sets his cup down first, wiping the foam from his upper lip. “Soph, I’m surprised to see you out here, and not in one of the minstrel’s beds,” he teases.

Sophia giggles. “I could say the same thing about you.”

She earns a hearty laugh at that from them all, although Louis recovers quickly. “Ay now, that’s not fair,” he rebuffs. “I distinctly heard one of them turn you down specifically.”

“That’s because he said it was too close to Samhain, and he thought she was a selkie,” Liam butts in. Harry cuts him a sharp look, surprised at how quick Liam is to defend Sophia’s honor. Sophia is pretty, in a village sort of way, but a far cry from the beautiful wood nymphs that seduced travelers along the road, only to draw them far enough from safety to kill them.“He didn’t want to end up with his heart cut out.”

“You flatterer,” Sophia says with a toss of her hair. Liam smiles, but Harry notices that he doesn’t return the flirtatious arm touch that she gives him.

“Selkie?” Harry says, trying his best to join in the teasing. “I’ve known Sophia long enough to know a banshee when I see one.”

“Harry!” she protests with a laugh. “I do not sound like a banshee.”

“That’s not what we heard Liam’s first night here,” Louis says, smile mischievous behind his cup’s rim

Sophia sets her half-empty tankard on the counter. “That’s rich for you to say, Louis Tomlinson, as we all know you’re just a step brother away from being a wee hobgoblin.”

Harry laughs at that, more at Louis’ sullen face than Sophia’s low joke. He hasn’t forgotten about Louis pushing him into the wood with Liam, after all.

"I'm not that short," Louis sputters.

Sophia takes a half-step back makes a small curtsy. “And I'm going to quit while I’m ahead. I bid you all good-night.”

Harry chuckles as she curtsies once more, turns, and drifts up the stairs to her lofted bedroom. He turns back to Louis and Liam and leans on his elbows on the counter. “Last one for me, too, lads,” Louis says as he knocks back the rest of his drink. “Fizzy keeps sleeping past the rooster and _someone’s_ got to bake the bread.” He gives Liam a friendly punch on the shoulder before ambling to the door and pushing it open.

The autumn breeze whips into the dining room as Louis opens and shuts the door, and it thumps shut after him. Which leaves Harry and Liam alone, much to Harry's discomfort. Though not as much as in the last few days, he admits to himself, and then he’s further discomfited by the fact that he’s not discomfited by the thought of sharing a drink with a witch hunter.

It's because he has to wait for Liam to go to bed, he tells himself. It’s only polite. They’re not _sharing_ a drink. That would be... intimate. He fills the time by walking to the front door and lowering the bolt in place, then slowly paces back to the counter.

Liam is staring into his drink, thumb tracing the lip. He takes a slow drink, and Harry stops in front of him, thankful for the twenty inches of buffer space that the wooden countertop places between himself and the hunter.

“Do you ever feel locked in place?” Liam asks, apropos of nothing. His eyes dart towards Harry’s with a speed that makes Harry blink and look away. He grabs a dirty tankard to distract himself with.

“I… don’t know what you mean.”

He glances sideways at Liam, who’s staring back into his cup. His heavy brows knit together in a severity Harry hasn't seen since the wood. “Maybe you’re a deadbolt. And you’ve always been one. And maybe even, you’re a pretty damn good one. But then… maybe you don’t want to be a deadbolt anymore.”

Harry drops the cup, staring at Liam. Was Liam saying what Harry thought he was saying?

Liam shakes his head absently. “Those boys the other day,” he says in a soft voice, and Harry immediately stiffens. “Did you know them?”

“Yes,” Harry says shortly, his mood shifting back into resentful caution. He doesn’t want to talk about this, not after he’d already tried to purge it from his body. “I know every person in this town.”

Liam’s head drops down. His shoulders hunch. a beat, and then he whispers, in a low tone that Harry almost misses, “D’you ever wish that you could save them all?”

If there’s some sort of moral philosophy that Harry expects to hear from a witch hunter, it’s not this. He stares down at Liam, momentarily dumbfounded. Liam doesn’t look up from his drink. Harry’s eyes flit to the fang stitched into Liam’s vest, then to the scar on his arm visible from his rolled-up sleeve.

“Yes,” Harry replies, before he can stop himself. “Yes, I do.” The words come out more honest and vulnerable than he had intended.

Liam raises his eyes to meet Harry’s. There’s another scar on his neck, on the opposite side of his birthmark. Harry suddenly becomes acutely aware of his pulse in his own neck and the sweat beneath his palms.

Liam takes a breath as if to say something else, when a large slamming noise interrupts them and makes them jump. “Blimey, what was that?” Liam asks as he leaps from his stool, dagger drawn.

“Dunno,” Harry muses. He’s still breathing faster than warranted for a simple conversation, and he blinks quickly to calm himself. “Someone’s at the door, I reckon.”

He’s puzzled, though he can’t deny that he’s slightly relieved at the opportunity to step away from Liam, from the intensity of his gaze. He walks a few paces to the door and unlatches the top half. He swings it inward a few inches and peers out.

There’s no one there. Harry’s eyebrows knit, and he opens the door wider to stick his head through the door. The rain is still falling, though now more gently, and the heavy smell floods the air. He pulls his head back inside and lifts the torch from the bracket by the door. It sits heavy and hot in his clammy hands. He extends it out into the night to see in the darkness.

“No one there?” Liam asks from behind Harry. He’s crept closer from the bar to the door and is barely inches from Harry’s back, peering around him into the darkness. Harry shakes his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he spies a strange white square on the ground outside the door.

He unlatches the bottom half of the door with his left hand while returning the torch to its rack with his right. He squats to examine the square and discovers that it’s a piece of parchment. He lifts it by one corner, minding where it drips on the stone floor, and holds it up to the light, head tipped in curiosity.

Then immediately drops it, as if scalded by the soaked vellum.

“What’s that?” Liam asks sharply. Harry stares straight ahead, unseeing, heart suddenly pounding a hundred miles a minute. He barely feels Liam push past him to bend down and pick up the parchment for himself.

“Don’t,” Harry says harshly, snapping back to focus. He reaches out to snatch the vellum from Liam’s hand but he knows he’s a few seconds too late.

Liam lets the parchment go easily and stares at Harry quizzically. “Does that say ‘Gemma?’ Who’s that?” He takes a look at Harry’s blanched face and cocks his head.

Harry doesn’t want to say. He stares down at the scrawling letters that seem to writhe like snakes against the ashen background. He doesn’t want to so much as look at Liam anymore. He shakes his head quickly and crumples the parchment into a ball, then strides over to the fire and uses a pair of tongs to shove it hurriedly into the hottest part of the fire. It burns rapidly, like a swollen ember doused in alcohol. The flames eat away at the coarse material until it’s swallowed whole.

“...Harry?”

“I’ve got to close up now,” Harry says, trying to hold steady the shaking terror in his voice. He straightens up, tosses a handful of ash on the fire to deaden it for the night, and turns to Liam with a bracing “Good night.”

He hurries past Liam towards his ground-floor bedroom, desperate to distance himself from the dining room, from the feel of the parchment in his hand, from the phantom name inscribed on it.

Liam doesn’t stop him as he strides past, only watches Harry’s retreat. Hastily, he shuts the door and slumps against it, willing his breath, his heart, and his mind to calm.

He doesn’t want to think about the parchment taunting him. He doesn’t want to think about how far away Anne’s soothing presence feels. He doesn’t want to think about the crescent moon waxing more gibbous by the day. He doesn’t want to think about Liam’s boots tromping up the stairs over his head.

But he does, because Liam’s room is right above Harry’s, and he can hear him pacing long past the sound of the door closing.

He wonders what Liam is thinking about as he pushes himself off of the mantel and leans over his desk to ration out more of his and Anne’s powdery protective compound. He exits his room briefly to sprinkle the mixture into the cracks in the inn’s front door. The dim firelight casts flickering shadows on the walls, and Harry finds himself hurrying back to the comforting sage-and-lavender aroma of his bedroom.

Liam’s still pacing upstairs. Harry stares upward at the patterned wooden crossbeams of his ceiling.

_D’you ever wish that you could save them all?_

Harry’s hands start to shake and he sits down on his bed to press his head into his palms.

_Yes, yes I do._

* * *

Six

* * *

Liam has made a strange discovery.

He’s standing in the King’s Lane, a stone’s throw from the inn’s entrance. The wooden shield that hangs on a post above the door swings gently in the morning breeze that hasn’t yet managed to blow away the predawn fog. Liam turns his head slightly to the right, then slightly to the left. He rests a hand on the treetrunk beside him.

Hawthorn. There’s no other hawthorn in the area, but there’s one here, and one to his left. He can’t believe he hasn’t noticed before, but the branches grow strangely, bent at odd angles that he thinks even a botanist would puzzle over. He takes three steps to his left so that the inn is framed between the branches of the hawthorn. The two trees create four points that surround the inn in his field of vision. And the fifth is the wooden sign above the door, inscribed with a single word, “INN.”

It makes a pentacle.

Liam cocks his head to the side.

As he stares, Louis turns around the corner of the inn, a basket of bread tucked beneath one arm. He raises his arm in a friendly wave to Liam, who waves back and steps forward.

“Hey, Louis, can I ask you a question?”

Louis shifts the basket for a firmer grip and waits until Liam's standing in front of him. “What is it?”

Liam isn’t sure how to ask his question without sounding like a paranoid witch hunter. “That sign over the door. That’s hawthorn wood, isn’t it?”

Louis turns, squints. “Hawthorn?”

“Yeah.” Hawthorn. He's seen stands of it in forests before. But he's also seen it braced around witch's dens, over each doorway and window, and in fires beneath bubbling cauldrons of poison. Protective, the hag had told him. Before he'd impaled her.

Shrugging, Louis turns back to Liam and shakes his head. “The only wood I know is the kind that burns.”

Liam licks his lips and tries again. “Have you ever noticed… is there ever anyone peculiar that goes in and out of the inn?”

Louis’ befuddlement disappears behind a grin. “You mean, besides the Styles?”

“Well—" Liam pauses. Louis has a point. Liam had initially been relieved to know that all of Glenfallow agreed with him that Harry was odd. Odd, but harmless. Why else would the townsmen still congregate in the inn's tavern at night to share ale, gossip, and stories?

"I meant, perhaps, a bunch of old women? A lot of strangers that you don’t know? A gathering?” Liam is running out of synonyms for witches, hags and covens.

Louis’ grin transforms back into a confused look. “Strangers? Liam, it’s an _inn_.”

“I know that,” Liam says, trying to hide his exasperation. “I mean, you know, _strange—_ ”

But Louis seems affronted, or at least perturbed enough to stiffen and interrupt Liam. “I don’t know what to tell you, Liam. The Styles’ never turn away guests. Money is money, everyone in this town knows that, and doesn’t begrudge them for it.”

He leaves Liam standing in the middle of the lane, staring up at the hawthorn wood, wondering. 

Strangely for him, he hasn’t felt the call of the woods for a while. The sight of the crucified twins is still burned in his mind, and he isn’t altogether eager to return to the woods this close to Samhain. Not alone at least. He’s kept his trips brief, always making sure to return before dark, but always with a stag, a warren of rabbits; something to bring back to the village to prove his time in the woods wasn’t a complete waste, and to acquaint himself as a boon to the town, not a burden.

He wasn’t even sure Harry would accept the offerings. The innkeeper remained as avoidant as ever on evenings when he supped, and Liam didn’t push it. But to his surprise, Harry did accept the meat. Liam even tried to tease him about it, that Harry didn’t seem like the type to enjoy venison. He’d had merely looked at him blankly and reminded him that the village needed to eat.

So Liam attempts to stay out of the way, and when his presence was necessitated, to keep conversation to a minimum. In a strange way, the quiet evenings of the inn started to feel comfortable. He can’t explain it, but it was almost like entering the doors, eating his food, and drinking his ale has a calming effect.

And besides, there’s no use fretting about the oncoming Samhain if he can’t also enjoy the festival that comes with it.

A few afternoon later, he stands in the Meadow, the weak autumn sun warming his face. It’s been weeks since he felt it in full. He feels somehow naked with only the weight of his bow on his back instead of the usual melee combination. He doesn’t need it out here in the grassy flatland that serves as Glenfallow’s festival grounds. Enough days have passed since they found the Branmill twins that Liam can at last close his eyes without the vision of their mutilated bodies replacing the blackness behind his eyelids. He takes a deep breath, inhaling the sharp odor of pine, tallow, and wood smoke.

“Oy, when you come back down to earth, pass me the sledge.”

Liam opens his eyes, grins sheepishly, and tosses Niall the sledgehammer. He catches it deftly and hammers the last stake into the ground, then straightens up. “You can let go now.”

Liam releases the support line he’s been holding and smiles at the newly constructed tent flapping merrily in the autumn breeze.

All around him, the Meadow is full of tented canvas, crude grocery stands, half-full wagons, and people. It seems almost everyone in the village is readying for Samhain. Liam wonders if the festival can possibly exceed the mere anticipation of it, given how excitable everyone is a full week before the event. Children shriek among the rushes; the youngfolk brood and banter with each other; mothers beckon and scold each in turn as the townspeople build the Meadow into a tented village.

The excitement is infectious, and Liam hopes he can extend his stay until at least then. He watches a gaggle of children decorating a Samhain altar with ribbons of reed and wreaths of maple leaves.

As he surveys the ornamentation of the altar he detects a familiar loping gait out of the corner of his eye. He turns to see Harry speaking with the Widow Teasedale, gesturing to the herbs in her cart. As he watches, Harry trades some herbs for a coin, then turns to walk away. Then he stops, suddenly, in the middle of the field, looking up at the sky, as if he’s heard something.

Liam squints upward but sees nothing, and he can’t hear anything over the background din of almost the whole village in the Meadow. Regardless, Harry starts walking again, and Liam scratches his head.

“Yeah, that’s Hazza for you,” Niall says. He slides up next to Liam and stands with his arms crossed over his chest. “Always a bit of a cuckoo.”

For some reason, Liam is blushing that Niall caught him staring. It’s probably just because Niall already caught him daydreaming earlier. He tries to play it off with a shrug. “Definitely the strangest innkeeper I’ve had.”

“Yeah, but them’s good people,” Niall says and turns back to the tent. He steps inside and Liam follows him. Niall’s bent over at the waist, looking for pinpricks of sunlight that betray holes in the tarpaulin. “‘Sides, Styles have always sorta kept to themselves, don’t bother anyone. Especially in the last couple years.”

“How’s that?” Liam asks. He squats to the ground to test the strength of the tent’s wall.

“Oh, don’t you know?” Niall straightens up and looks over at Liam, surprise written on his face.

Liam tosses up his hands. “I’ve only been here a week and a half.”

“By the plague. Feels like a month. Anyway, like I was saying. It was quite a few Samhains ago. She was a couple years older than us.”

Liam slowly stands up, holding onto one of the support poles, staring at Niall but suddenly seeing Harry’s brazen anger, the wounded voice saying “ _It’s just me and Mum_.”

“Who?” Liam asks slowly.

“Harry used to have a sister. Gemma.”

He twists his head back around, but Harry is gone, disappeared down the path back towards the village. He can’t feel the support pole anymore, instead recalling the parchment Harry had snatched from his hand one of his first nights here. Gemma. “What happened to her?”

Niall shrugs. “All we know is that she was the first. It was after her that people started disappearing into the woods.”

Liam’s gaze moves to the opposite side of the Meadow from the town, into the copse of trees closest to them. They’ve never looked as ominous as they do now. The autumn sun can’t penetrate through the golden leaves, and Liam wonders if it looks darker than before. “And… how long have people have been disappearing?”

He hears Niall heft a log into place, hears it thump against the deadened grass beneath them. “Reckon it’s been… ‘bout seven years now, come midwinter.”

Liam doesn’t move his eyes from the trees. Seven years. Seventh Samhain. That explained why it was getting worse. He tilts his head to rest it against the tentpole, and one hand reaches up to finger the leather strap of the silver medallion he wears around his neck. “So that’s why Harry always tries to stop them from going out there. Because she was the first.”

Niall shrugs again and turns away. “Fool’s errand. People do what they want to do. Harry can’t protect them if they don’t want to be protected.”

Niall doesn’t realize it, but his offhand remark cuts through Liam, who suddenly feels a strange kinship with Harry—the peculiar, dedicated, but ultimately ineffective safekeeper of his people. Liam carries with him the deaths and wounds of all the casualties who fell because he wasn’t fast enough, or good enough, to keep them all safe. And Harry does the same. He shudders unconsciously at the memory of the Branmill twins. Harry knew them, like he knew all the townsfolk. Harry thought their blood was on his hands. Liam fingers the fang embedded into the heart of his vest, at the cost The Fight ripped from him only a few moons ago. Harry knows that cost, too.

And yet… it’s clear that Harry dislikes him, and this confuses Liam further. Why does Harry despise witch hunters so much, if his own sister was killed by a witch?

He turns back to the path where he last saw Harry, again, wondering, until Niall calls his name again to lift the anvil from its rack, and his worries fall away beneath the blacksmith’s genial voice and booming laugh.

* * *

Seven

* * *

Night falls quickly, as it is wont to do when the leaves change and winter approaches. When they can no longer see the surrounding wagons, and the light from the lantern proves insufficient, Niall and Liam tie down the canvas of his tent for the night and head back into the village.

He bids Niall good night at the blacksmith’s shop in the village square and points his feet in the direction of the inn, looking forward to a pint of mead and, perhaps, to share it with Harry, as an equal champion of the innocent.

He’s barely gone ten yards before a slight noise makes him start, drawing his bow and nocking an arrow in the blink of an eye. He keeps his bow trained on the darkness behind the baker’s shop until a lean figure falters forward, arms raised in surrender.

Liam recognizes the backlit curls immediately, even before Harry’s dry drawl floats from across the street. “Going to shoot me, hunter?”

“No.” Liam lowers his bow but doesn’t remove the arrow. “I try not to waste arrows on the skinny ones.”

He feels differently towards Harry now, but he doesn’t know how to express it. To know that he, too, has felt the loss of family… at the hands of a supernatural creature, no less… And yet, for whatever reason, Harry supremely rejects the solution that Liam represents with his bow and his sword. So Liam opts for cautious vigilance, much as Harry has treated him the last two weeks.

He’s about to ask Harry what he’s doing lurking about the shadows when he spies a basket of bread on Harry’s left arm. He nods to the basket. “That looks like my supper.”

It’s too dark to make out the finer details of Harry’s face, but Liam thinks he can detect a coy smirk. “Guess my cooking hasn’t sent you scurrying out of Glenfallow yet.”

Liam smiles despite himself. A joke. A joke from the stiff innkeeper who hates strangers, and especially witch hunters.

“You’re gonna have to try harder than that,” he says as he removes his arrow from the bow and stashes it in his quiver. He slings his bow back over his shoulder and turns back towards the inn. Harry falls into step beside him, but says nothing. The silence builds, uncomfortable easing into awkwardness that’s exaggerated with every crunch of gravel underfoot, until Liam knows he has to say something inane, or else he’ll ask about Harry sister.

“How long is your mum gone for?” he comes up with.

Harry shoots him a sidelong glance. “She’ll be along soon. She went to visit my aunt.”

“Ah,” Liam says, waiting a few steps before continuing. “Seems a harsh time of year for traveling.”

“She’ll be back before Samhain,” Harry says firmly. Liam wonders if the emphasis is for Liam’s sake, or for his own.

He looks up at the sky; the moon is past half-full now, well into the gibbous stage. Only a few days left before the Otherworld draws near.

“Why do you protect them?” Liam asks. He asks it quietly, and Harry turns quickly, caught off-guard. “Why don’t you leave?”

He watches Harry, who squints ahead of him at the lights of the inn. They’re at the outskirts of the village now, only a few houses on the winding lane between the village square and the inn.

“This is my home,” Harry says, and the thickness in his voice strikes Liam to the core.

But he can’t help but press further. He wants to know. He _needs_ to know, if he’s going to stop it. Against what he’d sworn to himself with Niall, he broaches the topic of Gemma, of her mysterious disappearance seven years ago. “They say every Seventh Samhain is worse than the others.”

He knows, immediately, he’s said the wrong thing. Harry rounds on him, a wildfire in his eyes, and that’s when Liam hears it.

A rustle, a static charge in the air -- something soft but clear, but also _wrong_ , like hollow sound of silence that falls sudden in a crowded room; or like the absence of noise after a deep crack of thunder. Liam’s ears prick, and he stops, his pulse quickening like mad.

“You think--” Harry starts, but his voice dies in his throat when Liam darts forward and claps a hand over his mouth,. Harry’s eyes widen, angrier still, but Liam shakes his head.

“Don’t. Move,” he hisses as quietly as he can.

Harry stops struggling and turns his head to look over his shoulder, where Liam is staring. Liam keeps his hand on Harry’s mouth, rewarded when Harry lets out a sharp gasp of surprise.

It’s a wolf. Or, rather, what used to be a wolf.

They can see its outline in the light of the miller’s lantern. It’s massive, hulking, taking up almost the entire lane with its huge frame. Liam’s never seen a wolf this big before, or one this ghastly.

Its entire left side is covered in what looks like a scaly crust rather than skin, mottled and blistered. Its head is missing skin entirely, bare bones and sinew visible in the orange gleam of the lantern. But worst of all are its eyes, which they see when it swivels its thick neck to look at them - red, glowing, and seeping with blood. This is no longer a normal wolf. This is a creature straight from the Otherworld. A hellhound.

The wolf sniffs, a great inhale that ends with a grunt, and Liam’s gut tells him the only thing that’s stopped them from being eaten is that it’s surprised to see them. Slowly, noiselessly, he bends to his waist and withdraws the eight-inch dagger he keeps in his boot. He presses it into Harry’s hand.

Harry turns back to him, and instead of anger his eyes are wide with fear. He looks down at the blade in Liam’s hand, and shakes his head silently.

Liam pushes the knife harder into Harry’s hand, nodding insistently at the weapon to communicate his demand, and he feels Harry’s long fingers reluctantly close around his own, around the handle.

The wolf snuffles again and takes a step forward. Liam knows they have precious few seconds left, and he draws a deep lungful of the autumn air, then acts.

He steps to the side and shoves Harry to his left in the same motion that he whips his bow from his shoulders. He hears Harry careen sideways; another second and he’s got an arrow nocked and lets it fly at the hellwolf.

Before it even hits his target he’s backing up, reaching for another arrow. The hellwolf roars in pain, and Liam can see the arrow struck through what would have been the wolf’s forehead. The wolf rears on its back legs and Liam lets another arrow fly before looking around for Harry.

Damn him, Harry is a jumble of limbs again, staggering to his feet, and Liam grabs him by the collar and shoves him in the direction of the inn before reloading his bow once more. “Goddammit, _run_!”

The wolf charges, its skeletal paws thudding against the hard ground; Liam waits until the last second before throwing himself to the side of the lane and out of the hound’s reach, letting fly another arrow in the process. It strikes the wolf’s shoulder and bounces harmlessly off the protective coating of mutilated skin.

Liam curses himself for leaving his sword and axe carefully sheathed in his guest room. He pulls another arrow out, aims, and fires the moment the wolf whirls in pain and anger: three arrows now protrude of its head.

It doesn’t seem to stop it, though. It charges again, and Liam’s foot catches on a loose stone--he swerves too late, and the wolf’s paw strikes his side. He feels his armor tear at the same time the force of the blow knocks all the air from his lungs. He staggers, falls, his ribs on fire, but a quick pat doesn’t bring up any blood on Liam’s hands -- the claws didn’t seem to have punctured him.

Having charged twice, the wolf is now in about the same spot that they found it -- and Harry, damn Harry, is still standing, transfixed, right behind the miller’s house. Liam chokes for breath against his ribs, wheezing while he forces himself to his hands and knees, scrabbling around on the ground for his bow that the blow knocked from his hands. Harry’s going to be killed--

The wolf howls, an unearthly, wailing noise that seems to rattle Liam’s bones, and he looks up and sees it charge at Harry. Liam's mouth opens but he can’t hear his own yell over the wolf’s satanic scream; he can’t breathe but he fights to move his legs forward, heading for the demonic creature bearing down on the gangly innkeeper.

There’s another roar -- or is that just the roaring in his ears?-- and Harry goes down beneath the wolf, Liam’s mouth opens again but he can’t hear anything, can’t see anything but the hulking beast lying against the miller’s home.

_…Lying_?

The next thing Liam knows he’s beside the monstrosity, and it’s not moving, and there’s a leather boot with yellow cowhide trousers sticking out beneath its right front paw.

It’s fevered desperation that moves Liam to tug at the wolf, to kick and pull at its disgusting hide, trying to move its motionless body. He grabs it head, wincing at the feel of his fingers sinking into slimy sinew, and tugs with all his might.

Harry’s slack face stares up at him, blood spattering his skin.

Liam’s afraid that he’s too late, but Harry blinks and his mouth opens in trepidation. “Liam,” he says.

Liam almost drops the wolf head in the combination of surprise, relief, and wild abandon. “You killed it?” he asks breathlessly.

Harry looks down, and Liam follows his gaze. Both of Harry’s hands are still wrapped around the hilt of Liam’s dagger, the blade of which is buried in the hellwolf’s breast.

“Are you sure it’s dead?” Harry’s voice sounds numb.

Liam looks at the head in his hands. The eyes are dulled; in fact, they look like they’ve disappeared altogether. “It’s dead.” He nods at the blade in Harry’s hands. “It’s silver, should work against most demons.”

Harry says nothing to that; he looks up at Liam, but it’s like he’s looking past him, shadows flickering eerily over his face in the light of the miller’s lantern.

Now that the danger is over, the full weight of his injuries gust back into Liam’s body. He almost staggers but manages to keep the top half of the wolf off of Harry. “Can you stand? We need to get cleaned up.”

Harry nods, but it’s an uncomfortably long period of time before he gathers his knees beneath him and rises, using the miller’s house as a crutch. Liam lets the beast’s head fall to the ground and they both stand back to survey the body.

“That’s one nasty demon,” Liam says at last. He drops his hands to his knees and leans against them, catching his breath and holding the spot on his ribs where the wolf struck him. “That one almost got me.”

“It’s wrong,” Harry whispers.

Still bent at his waist, Liam turns his head to look up at him. “Well, yeah. It’s a demon.”

Harry’s shaking his head. his eyes haven’t lost that bright terror since they first encountered the wolf.

“It’s wrong.” His gaze finally slides to Liam. “We have to burn it.”

Liam drops his head and lets out a long, slow breath. The only thing he wants to do right now is take a hot bath and wash himself of the beast’s gristle, and then give his ribs a long rest from the paw’s wound, but he knows that Harry is right. Immolation is the only sure-fire way to permanently banish demons back to the Otherworld.

As he sighs and straightens up, he hears footfalls on the gravel. He braces himself, and lets out another sigh, this time of relief, as a bobbing light turns the corner of the miller’s house. It’s Niall, the blacksmith. He raises his torch to survey the scene before him.

“By the plague,” he mutters. “I heard noises and came as quick as I could.”

There’s more footsteps behind him, several pairs. A crowd has followed Niall; he can see Louis the baker’s face peek over Niall’s shoulder and shudder in disgust at the corpse at their feet. The miller’s there, too, and the Widow Teasedale and several other men that Liam knows by face but not by name.

“What happened?” Niall asks.

Still reeling from the assault, Liam fights to keep the quiver from his voice. “Harry and I were walking back from the square when we heard a noise. I wounded it with a few arrows, but it knocked me over.” He lifts his arm and shows the blacksmith his ribcage where the wolf has torn his armor open. “Then it charged Harry, and he stabbed it through the heart.”

There’s dead silence except for the gasp of the Widow Teasedale as she presses her hands to her mouth. “You killed it?” Louis asks, edging forward around Niall to look closer at the wolf. Liam thinks he hears a note of incredulity in Louis’ voice.

Harry stares down at the dagger still clutched in his hand. “It was Liam’s knife,” he says. Liam’s eyebrows raise, and Harry lifts his face towards Liam’s. “He gave me his knife. He saved me.”

Liam isn’t quite sure what to say-- he’s barely earned a “good morning” from Harry, much less gratitude from saving his life. Instead of dwelling on the strange interaction, he turns back to the crowd. “We need to burn it, now. So it can’t become undead and come back on Samhain.”

There’s a nervous murmur through the crowd and Liam bends down to wipe his hands on his trousers. “Can someone help me drag it far enough away?”

The crowd bustles; Niall drums up a dilapidated cart onto which he, Harry, and Liam push and shove the rotting corpse until it’s easier to drag. Louis, Eoghan, and Greg push the back while Niall, Harry and Liam pull the front of it a safe distance away from the miller’s house; then they dump the body onto the ground.

It’s hard work dragging the wolf into the woods, a safe enough distance from the village, and Liam’s muscles scream at him for rest. Harry’s deceptively strong for his lean frame, and it seems to Liam that he’s barely breathing hard at all when they reach a secluded glade. His terror seems to have ceded to a grim determination.

They pile firewood around the demon, and Louis offers his torch to the task. The autumn’s dead leaves provide excellent tinder for the kindling to alight.

Demons burn easily, and soon the crowd is ringed around the vibrant bonfire as the hellwolf’s flesh melts away against the fuel. Only then does Liam’s breathing slow and his pulse return to normal. It’s a good thing, too - the smell is atrocious, and Liam presses his arm against his nose to lessen the odor.

He watches the flames dance, grateful for the fire’s consuming burn and the warmth it gives. He’s almost chilly now that the sweat has evaporated from his brow, and the panic from the evening has vanished, adrenaline giving way to exhaustion

He turns to check on Harry, only to find that Harry’s already watching him. He says nothing, so Liam gives him a halfhearted smile.

“That’s enough adventure for one night,” Niall says from his left and claps him on the shoulder. “Why don’t we all settle down over a pint?”

Liam smiles in return and wipes his brow with the forearm least dirtied by the wolf’s gore. “Only if you’re buying,” he says as he joins the trudge away from the fire to the inn.

* * *

Eight

* * *

There’s a full crowd at the inn. Harry can hear them through the door to his ground floor bedroom, drinking, carrying on, and otherwise celebrating the death of the Gwyllgi.

He stands in the center of his room again, freshly bathed, sage and lavender wafting through his nose, his vine tattoos once more alive and purging the buildup of the day’s evil from his body. A Gwyllgi, a hellhound from the realm of the Otherworld itself, inside the village. It had crossed the sacred boundary and nearly killed the both of them.

There must be a breach in the boundary. He presses his hands to his eyes, thinking. He must patrol the boundary again, find the weakness, set it right. Once the crowd has departed and the festivities died down, he’ll walk the perimeter. No matter how frightened he is of doing so alone.

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees the rabid, glowing eyes of the Gwyllgi, smells the stench of its rancid breath and always, always, the slickness of the blade as it punctures the blistered flesh and silences the creature’s wild, angry heart.

He opens his eyes. The silver blade lies still on his cupboard, coated in a congealed layer of the beasts’ blood, but Harry can feel the discordant hum of the metal through the air. It’s almost as if it’s alive. Waiting for him to heft. To wield. To end another life.

He hates that he can still feel the tang of the metal on his skin. But even more, he hates that without it, he’d be dead.

In short, Harry was too stunned that it breached the boundary, too disbelieving, for his normal reactions to take place. It was only when he saw the ghostly eyes and ivory fangs bearing down on him that he remembered to act. A prayer to his ward charm, a momentary shielding spell, and Harry escaped its jaws in time to slide the blade into its breast.

One more second, and it would have battered through his shield, and gotten to him. If Liam hadn’t thrust the dagger into his hand, Harry would still be pinned up against the miller’s house, but it would be him gored by the wolf’s fangs, rather than the other way around.

It’s a tool, he reminds himself. He only used the silver when his own magick failed. He had to do what he could to stay alive, to fight the darkness threatening to consume Glenfallow. Even if that meant using metal. Even if that meant killing.

The vines twist tighter around Harry’s arms, and he forces himself to breathe deeply. The sparrows flit around his head, restless as his beating heart.

It’s no use trying to restore his calmness now. There’s too much to worry about. He lowers his hands and his sparrows, his butterfly, his vines return to their places on his chest and mold against his skin. He tugs a fresh tunic over his head, stuffs a sprig of sage into his pocket, and grabs the knife from the cupboard before opening the door.

The sound from the inn’s dining area greets him like a wall of noise, but Harry’s not ready for merrymaking. Not yet. He turns towards the stairs and takes them two at a time. Every room must be secured against the spirits. He checks each bedroom in turn, tucking a cut of fresh sage into each windowpane, until he reaches the last one on the left: Liam’s room.

He opens the door, assuming Liam has already joined the festivities downstairs, and starts suddenly when he sees Liam standing in the middle of the room.

“Sorry--” he starts to back up, to close the door after him, but Liam’s voice calls out.

“‘T’s all right, d’you need something?”

Harry pauses, then eases the door back open. “Sorry, I thought you were downstairs.”

He takes in the view in an instant: the bed is unmade and the cupboard door is open with several tunics and trousers hanging inside. The trunk beside the bed is open, and several sharp blades within it reflect the torchlight.

But that’s not where his eyes are drawn. Liam’s standing in the middle of the room, completely bare from the waist up except for a leather strap around his neck, from which hangs a silver circle. He’s trying to examine his ribcage through the primitive looking glass above the wash basin, and he’s also managed to clean himself up, Harry notices, eyes lingering on the pale chest before his attention is distracted by the wound in Liam’s side.

“I think it got me,” Liam says ruefully. He gingerly places a hand against his ribs. Harry can see the flesh is discolored and bruised, and when Liam takes his hand away, there’s an angry purple swatch that seems to roil and pulse beneath Liam’s sweat-tinged skin.

He pauses, lingering by the door, and doesn’t speak until Liam looks up at him expectantly. “May I?” he asks.

Liam nods and lifts his arm, and Harry takes two steps into the room to look closer. Just as he suspected; there’s something preternatural about the way Liam’s flesh throbs near the impact site. He straightens up and tries to keep his eyes on the wound, unwilling to advertise his newfound concern beneath Liam’s searching, quizzical gaze. He fights to keep his voice matter-of-fact. “I have some poultices, downstairs.”

“I can get it--” Liam starts, taking a step towards the door, but Harry quickly steps back, blocking his progress. He definitely doesn’t want the witch hunter to see his quarters, or more precisely see the witch paraphernalia that covers every inch of surface area.

“I’ll get it. Stay here.”

He returns to his room and digs through Anne’s potion chest before he locates what he’s looking for: essence of hellebore. He shakes the vial’s contents out into a sheepskin cloth and carries it upstairs. He hands it to Liam. “This should help. I have more, if you need it.”

Liam nods and takes the cloth by the corners to keep his fingers dry from the dampness. “Like this?” he asks, tucking the cloth beneath his left arm.

The poultice has missed the worst part of the wound by several inches. Harry braces himself, then shakes his head. “No, here.” He takes the cloth and gingerly moves it a few inches higher. Liam winces in pain, and Harry purses his lips

“Thanks,” Liam says, and his hand covers Harry’s as he dabs harder against the wound.

Harry lets go, his fingers sliding out from under Liam’s with difficulty. He feels the butterfly against his chest flap once against his chest, and he unconsciously shakes his head to pacify it. He knows what it means. The words are out before he can stop himself. “I never thanked you,” he says softly.

Liam says nothing.

“I meant what I said back there. You saved me.” The words tumble out quickly, as if Harry can’t stop, and he feels himself redden.

Liam’s smile tugs up the corners of his lips. “It’s what I do.”

Harry laughs at that. “You said you’re a witch hunter, when really…” he trails off, before he can say, “ _You’re a witch rescuer_.”

Liam cocks his head curiously. Harry shakes his own, still smiling and hoping that Liam chalks up his unfinished sentence as just another one of the innkeeper's son’s weird quirks. “Never mind. Thanks.” He sticks out his hand.

Liam smiles and shakes it. His hands are unusually cool, which surprises Harry.

Harry lets go and pulls out Liam’s dagger. “I think this is yours.”

“Keep it.” Liam reaches over and closes Harry’s fingers around the hilt, and his smile is warm enough to make Harry look away.

He pulls a smile that he hopes comes across as gracious. Liam’s a witch hunter. He’s a witch hunter that saved Harry. And beyond that, he’s a genuinely considerate gentleman that won’t stop helping Harry before he even realizes he needs it.

“You’ll have to show me how to use it sometime,” he says, and he knows it’s the friendliest thing he’s ever said to Liam. “I assume that letting hellhounds impale themselves isn’t its typical use.”

Liam lets out a chuckle, another smile that shines through his eyes but that Harry feels in his chest.

“No, it’s not. Happy to show you sometime. But right now, how about you show me how you make that famous Styles ale?”

It’s like he can sense how conflicted Harry feels and saves him from his own awkwardness. Harry nods and takes a step towards the door, but then he remembers the initial reason he entered Liam’s room. His hands close around the sprig of sage in his pocket, and he glances above Liam’s head at the windowpane.

He blinks, stunned. A sprig of sage already hangs halfway down the window, tied in place by a string.

Liam turns his head to follow Harry’s stare. “Oh, that,” he says with a wave of his hand. “I know a lot of people think that witch stuff is hogwash. But I’ll swear by sage. Saved my life from more than one demon, putting this over windows and doors.”

Harry barely contains his reaction. On the one hand, he can’t believe that Liam knows enough herbology to use sage. On the other, this means Liam can’t have missed the copious sage hidden in nooks and crannies around the inn, always near the window panes and door lintels.

“I’ll meet you downstairs, then, unless you need any more help.” He gestures to the fresh tunic Liam has pulled from the wardrobe and hung on the bedpost.

“I think I’ve got it,” Liam says, looking down at his wound again. “It’s already feeling loads better. What’s in this poultice?”

“Old recipe of Mum’s,” Harry says, already walking towards the door to avoid any more of Liam’s direct questions. Questions about “witch hogwash.” He allows himself a small grin as he shuts the door quietly behind him and hurries down the hallway to the dining area of the inn.

The sound floats up before he descends the stairs; it’s almost as crowded as it was when the travelers passed through. Sophia is behind the bar pushing forward four tankards towards Niall, who braces them in two hands and turns to a table with Louis, Eoghan, Greg, and Bressie. Harry can see they’re several drinks deep, and the lot of them keep throwing sidelong glances at the gaggle of women at the table across the room, where Louis’ sisters giggle behind their hands with several other young women.

It’s an unusual sight to see; this sort of camaraderie and gathering is usually reserved for Samhain, Imbolc, and the other seasonal festivals. Samhain is still almost a week away, but the anticipation, on top of the collective effort of dragging and burning the Gwyllgi, has brought the village together. Even the Widow Teasedale has come, with her circle of older women and other unmarried men.

Harry hurries behind the bar to help Sophia, who’s scraping gold coins into the storechest Harry keeps behind the counter. She doesn’t know it, but it’s enchanted so that if anyone except him, Anne, or Sophia were to reach inside it, their hand would burn and turn bright red. Harry had been pleased to find that spell, though he’d had a hell of a time plucking out one of Sophia’s hairs without her noticing so he could enchant it correctly.

“Has anyone needed food?” Harry asks Sophia. The widow Teasedale reaches the counter and offers Harry a warm smile. He reaches for the rosewater she prefers, and she takes it gratefully before alighting back towards her table.

Sophia shakes her head. “We’re fresh out of bread, anyway.”

“I know, that’s why I asked.” He remembers the bread basket he had just bought from Louis, now spread out somewhere on the lane to the inn, trampled by hellhound and villager alike. “Don’t we have some venison?”

“You mean, the deer Liam caught us day before last?” Sophia asks, giving Harry a sly smirk.

“Yes, that,” Harry says, willing himself not to flush again.

She lifts her thumb to gesture to the store room out back. “It’s drying. I paid Ernest a farthing to skin it, since you were out.”

Harry exhales in frustration. The deer would have kept ‘til today; he resented her paying for something he could do easily (with magick), for free. He shoves himself away from the counter to head into the store room to survey Ernest’s work.

The store room is dry and the smell of salt and fresh meat permeates the room. Harry dislikes both scents, salt for its negative alchemical properties and meat for its connotation of death. But the inn needs sustenance, and to Harry’s surprise, Ernest has done a good job on skinning and tanning the deer. He removes a side from the drying rack and pushes his way back outside to breathe in the fresh air from the forest.

It smells far better than the store room, but Harry can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with it. The pine trees don’t seem as tart. The smoke doesn’t seem as misty. He stares up at the stars, hoping that it’s just the leftover wrongness from burning the Gwyllgi. The Hunter constellation swims into his vision, its belt twinkling down at him. He wonders where Anne is, if she’s watching the stars too with Aunt Hortense a hundred miles away.

He won’t let himself dwell on her absence. He pushes the door to the inn open and steps inside.

The atmosphere has changed. The air is more frenetic than ever. Niall has brought his fiddle out and is sitting on a chair that someone—and Harry is willing to bet that it’s Louis—has placed on top of a table. Eoghan is sitting on the table beside him, his hands pounding out a rhythm on the hard oak, and all the other tables have been pushed to the walls. They’re dancing a reel in the middle of the inn, Louis dancing with Sasha Malik, Bressie with Lottie, and the Widow Teasedale with Paulie Higgins, the greaver.

Harry can’t hide his smile at the impromptu concert, and winds his way along the back of the inn to field the bar once more. It’s not long before he’s tapping his fingers to Niall’s happy tempo, pulling tankards from the clean rack and placing them along the taps for the next person.

It all stops, however, when he sees Liam is back downstairs, holding hands with Sophia as they dance the reel.

He can’t explain the feeling except for plain, bitter jealousy that erupts from within his breast and consumes every other sensation in his body. A strange humming fills his ears. He pulls out a sheepskin cloth and starts cleaning out tankards, head down, allowing his fringe to filter out the light and the happy scene before him. Like tearing his eyes away will somehow ease the envy constricting his lungs.

Stupid, he thinks to himself.

His hands are still wet from the essence of hellebore he gave Liam. He plunges them into the water Sophia drew, relishing how the sharp sting of the icy water draws his thoughts away from the hunter and the barmaid.

“Stupid,” he repeats, out loud this time.

“What’s stupid?”

Harry jolts and looks up. Liam is leaning over the bar, a quizzical half-grin on his face. “Why are you cleaning when everyone else is making merry?”

Hands still dripping with cold water, Harry rocks back off of his heels and stands up. Niall’s fiddle hasn’t rested; the rest of the makeshift couples are still dancing the reel in circles around the inn. “Don’t you… need to finish… Sophia?” Harry falls into an embarrassing splutter.

“Sophia?” Liam asks, and there’s a surprised note in his voice that somehow softens the blackness that just swallowed up Harry’s heart. He turns to look behind him, where Sophia and Louis twist and spin, arm in arm.

Liam turns back to Harry and grins wider. “I saw you throwing that rag about, with that look on your face, and thought you’d need a partner more.”

For some reason the buzzing in Harry’s ears returns, but this time it’s because he’s staring straight at Liam’s hand that’s extended towards Harry in an offer. An offer to dance. Liam saw “the look” on Harry’s face. How much did he know about his feelings? For that matter, how much did _Harry_ know about his _own_ feelings?

The only thing he can feel right now is the static in his head and how difficult it suddenly is to breathe. “You’re asking me to dance?”

The door bangs open and a woman runs in while letting out a desperate cry that stops everyone short. Niall’s bow falters and the note dies on the fiddle; everyone stares.

It’s Trisha Malik. She wrings her hands before pressing them to her cheeks, which makes her wide, panicked eyes look even wider. “Zayn,” she gasps out. “Zayn has gone into the woods.” Her eyes swivel towards Harry, who drops his hand before he can touch Liam’s.

* * *

Nine

* * *

This time, Harry doesn’t put up a fight when Liam demands to come along. It only takes them a few minutes to arm themselves, Liam with steel and Harry with herbs and wards and magick. While he hears Liam upstairs strapping on his weaponry, Harry downs his cateye potion to see better in the dark, although he knows they have the light of the gibbous moon that’s creeping ever closer to being full. He stuffs his pockets with sage, mallowsweet, and aster to stave off any demons that come early, like the Gwyllgi. He wishes Anne were here to center him and remind him of anything he may have forgotten.

Sophia has already filled his rucksack with yesterday’s bread and a cut of dried beef. He takes it with barely a glance and slings it over his shoulders. Liam descends the stairs, and Harry can feel the bite of metal waft through the air as he nears Harry.

“Ready?” he asks as he stops in front of Harry. He’s got a rucksack as well, though it’s carefully strapped at his waist so as to not impede the path of his axe, bow, and sword. “Have you the dagger?” he asks.

Harry almost winces but admits that yes, he does. The silver blade is tucked in his boot, wrapped in a protective layer of heather that shields his skin from the silver. He doesn’t want to have to accept help from Liam, especially not tonight. But the fact that he’s alive, with barely a scratch on him, trumps his wounded pride over Liam’s dalliance with Sophia.

He nods. They set out immediately and barely broach the forest before Liam, oblivious to Harry’s musings, pipes up with a question.

“This Malik fellow,” he says as they stride forward, and Harry closes his eyes to feel the subtle aura of the magickal boundary slide over his skin as they pass through it. The air is cooler under the canopy where the sunlight never reaches, and Harry straightens his rucksack to hide a shiver. “Who is he?”

Harry doesn’t want to chitchat, but more than that, he doesn’t want to lose another man to the forest. “He doesn’t live in the village,” Harry compromises with a brief explanation. “The Maliks are merchants from the north. They pass through a few times a year, stay a few nights each time. They always stay here for Samhain.”

He falls silent, but Liam isn’t one to let it linger. “Was he the type to wander? Or was he… called?”

Harry shakes his head before remembering that Liam can’t see as well in the dark as he can. “Never. He was very attached to his family, very protective ever since his father disappeared. It’s just Zayn and his mum and his sisters.”

Liam swears an oath beneath his breath, cursing the Vandrian for fracturing yet another family.

And then, Liam quiets, to the point that Harry stops and checks behind him to make sure the hunter is still there. He’s unaccustomed to silence in any form from Liam. But Liam doesn’t acknowledge him, and they continue northward, following Zayn’s trail.

Harry finally blurts out the question that’s been burning in his mind for the last two hours. “Why did you ask me to dance?”

Liam chuckles below his breath, and Harry sucks in his cheeks to stop the burning feeling in his face. “I feel that the more that I know you, the less I understand.”

Harry slows so that he’s more or less keeping stride with Liam, instead of leading him. “I don’t know what you mean.” He can’t stop the stupid warmth in his cheeks.

“You’re an innkeeper that doesn’t like strangers. You know how to run a successful inn, but you don’t want to leave this tiny village.” He hesitates before continuing, softer than before. “Your sister disappears, but you don’t want the help of witch hunter.”

The heat in Harry’s face grows stronger, but it’s not from blushing this time, but from indignation. “My family’s business is my own,” he says, and in a few short strides he’s sped ahead of Liam once more, keeping the witch hunter carefully at his back.

They walk for hours before Liam speaks up again. “He’s traveling in a straight line still,” he says from behind Harry, who looks back to see Liam studying Zayn’s tracks again. “Do you think he’ll lead us right to the Vandrian?”

Harry faces forward in the direction of Zayn’s tracks, but his eyes shift to his left, where the darkness emanates. He can’t bring himself to tell Liam the truth. “I suppose we’ll find out,” he says.

Liam swears again, but Harry points to the east. The sky is a shade lighter through the leafless branches at the top of the trees. “Dawn,” he says. “He’ll be easier to track then.”

“He’s fine to track now,” Liam says and heaves himself to his feet. But instead of stepping forward, his heavy eyebrows crease and he looks once more at Harry. “Do you think… he wants us to find him? That… the Vandrian wants us to find him?”

Harry’s heart sticks in his throat at that, but despite the prickle of fear, he won’t let Zayn go, not when they were so close to the time of his disappearance, not when they still have a chance. “I suppose we’ll find out,” he repeats.

Liam nods grimly and slides his sword halfway out of its sheath to check its ease. Satisfied, he nods again and Harry turns to lead them forward once more.

Only a few minutes pass before they reach a rambling brook as wide as a man is tall. They hopscotch across on a few well-placed boulders, but that’s when Zayn’s trail stops cold.

“Blimey,” Liam says, hands on his hips while he stares at the hard ground in the growing daylight. “Where in seven hells did he go?”

They pace the opposite bank for ten minutes, but find no more tracks. it’s as if Zayn somehow took flight.

“Split up?” Liam asks. “I’ll walk ten minutes upstream and see if he left any clues, and you do the same downstream, then meet back here.”

Nodding, Harry turns and sets off along the muddy creekbank. He examines rock after rock, sandy beach after sandy beach, but finds no evidence of Zayn reaching the other side of the creek. He doubles back over, but it doesn’t look like Zayn double-crossed the creek, either. He checks over his shoulder, and then murmurs a finding spell with a piece of foxglove from his rucksack: nothing.

Harry trudges back upstream, anxiety slowly clouding his brain. This wouldn’t be the first time a missing villager’s footprints vanished into thin air. Harry rubs his face with his palm, feeling the roughness of two days’ worth of growth. He’s reached the spot where they split up, but Liam hasn’t returned yet.

He forces himself to remain calm. Perhaps they missed something on the trail earlier, and Zayn doubled back. Maybe Liam found something upstream, explaining his delay.

They’ve been traveling for close to eight hours, and he convinces himself that he’s just exhausted. He gathers a handful of kindling and arranges it into a pyramid shape. He pulls a handful of the beef from his pack and sets it beside the firewood so it will warm, and then bends down to whisper the fire into existence. Soon a lick of flame bursts from his fingers and ignites the leaves.

In his addled state, Harry doesn’t realize he forgot to look round and check that he was truly alone until he hears, “I knew it.”

The voice comes from behind Harry and he feels something drop in the pit of his stomach. He releases the leaves immediately and stands up, but when he turns around he’s met with an unfortunately familiar sight: Liam’s narrowed expression down the length of a fletched arrow.

The arrowhead is barely an inch from Harry’s nose. Harry doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink, acutely aware of the taut strength in Liam’s arms that’s stopping him from releasing the string.

“Liam—”

“I should have guessed before. The sage. The hawthorn wood. The ale. Your mother, too?”The words tumble from Liam’s mouth in a visceral rage. “Of course she is, you must have learned from her, that _witch—_ ”

“Liam, please put down the bow.”

“It’s a wonder you kept me around this long. Is she here? Is she—she’s the Vandrian, isn’t she? For all the front you put up about wanting to protect the village—it’s been you all along.”

“It’s not me. Liam, if you just let me explain—”

“ _Shut up_.” Liam’s breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling with suppressed fury. “You say one more word and I’ll put this arrow right through your—”

Harry doesn’t need a word. He just needs the feeling, the focused breath that snaps Liam’s arrow in half, each part twanging uselessly apart from the released force. Liam staggers at the lack of tension in the weapon; his arms go limp from holding a now-unloaded bow, and he takes an unsteady step forward to compensate. His eyes widen and he reaches for his sword, but Harry reacts too quickly.

Before Liam’s fingers can graze his hilt, twin cords shoot upward from the ground and wrap themselves around each of Liam’s wrists. He gives a cry of surprise as they snap upward and snake around the sturdy lower limbs of the elm tree behind him.

Liam struggles, jerking his arms downward, his fingers scrabbling for purchase to free himself, but the vines hold strong, keeping Liam pinned against the trunk of the tree.

“You _witch_ ” Liam spits out, voice venomous. “I should have known—”

Harry steps forward and puts a finger to Liam’s lips. “Shut up,” he says, “you say one more word, and I’ll put this branch right through your throat.”

He rests an arm on the branch upon which Liam’s left hand is tied. The elm tree hums to life. A branch bursts forth from the trunk beside Liam’s neck and winds itself back around to jab its point right into Liam’s neck.

Liam clenches his mouth shut, grimacing. His eyes dart between the threatening branch and Harry’s darkened expression. He gives one more mighty tug against his bonds, to no avail, before stilling.

Harry steps forward again so that there’s barely two inches between his face and Liam’s. He can feel Liam’s hot, angry breath against his nose. “I’ll take this, and this,” he says jeeringly, reaching over Liam’s shoulder to pull the axe and sword free from their harnesses. He drops them unceremoniously onto the ground twenty feet away, where he knows Liam won’t be able to reach even if he does manage to break free of the elm.

“Yes, I’m a witch. Yes, Anne’s a witch. Well done.”

On the face of it, it’s almost too easy to put the walls back up. It’s hard to believe that just five minutes ago he had considered Liam something akin to a friend. At least a comrade, if not more.

And yet, there’s a hollowness to the wall he constructs between him and Liam. It’s weakened by the sound of rain on the stable’s roof, by a pile of empty tankards of ale, by the warmth of flames that consumed a hellhound.

Harry puts the thought from his mind and meets Liam’s angry glower. “I’m not the Vandrian, and neither is she. It didn’t come to us until seven Samhains ago. Anyone in the village will tell you that, and tell you the Styles’ have been in Glenfallow many generations.”

“You’ve bewitched them,” Liam retorts. “Of _course_ they’ll say that—”

“I have not,” Harry says loudly, and the branch in front of Liam’s neck curls forward to constrict his throat. Liam gasps for air and Harry takes a step forward. “Glenfallow is my home. You asked me once why I protected them.”

“So why don’t you?” Liam shoots back, even though every breath rattles painfully in his throat. “If you’re a witch, you could have stopped it, or stopped the villagers—you let them go into the wood! You don’t hunt it down!”

“You don’t think I tried?” Harry bellows. He’s breathing hard as well, nauseated by the memories that flood his mind as he defends himself to Liam. “You don’t think I’ve put every protection spell known to witchkind on Glenfallow? You don’t think I try to stop every adventurer who thinks they can fight—and win?”

Liam’s spluttering falls silent, but Harry knows there’s one accusation he hasn’t yet answered. “You don’t think I’ve tried to fight it?” he says, softer now, heavy breathing almost drowning out his words. “I know. I know.” He hangs his head, slumps his shoulders. “I know because I’m the one who brought the Vandrian here.”

Liam stops struggling, and Harry slowly raises his head. Liam’s stare is wide-eyed, his anger temporarily muted with astonishment. He knows it’s too absurd a statement to be false; Liam believes him.

“It was myself, and my sister. We were playing with magick that we thought we could control. But it was too close to Samhain… we didn’t use enough sage… that’s when it came.”

Liam’s breath is audible, heavy, but he says nothing. Harry continues in a bracing tone, choking the words out even though they scrape his throat raw.

“We tried to fight it. Me, and Anne, and Gemma. But it was too strong. It took her.”

He can’t meet Liam’s eyes anymore, scared to probe their depths for his reaction. It’s hard enough to keep talking. He can still see it, clear as a winter’s day in his mind. Gemma’s last terrified look before she disappeared. He can still hear his scream, blended with hers to create one continuous wrenching cry until she was silenced forever. And then it was just Harry, helpless on his knees, alone in the clearing.

He puts his hands to his temples, then drops his hands to his elbows and hugs his arms in a tense embrace. He draws a deep, shuddering breath. “So now you know. I do care about the village. I care about everyone that goes off into the wood. Every single one is my fault.” He raises his head, ignoring the burning of tears at the corners of his eyes. “I swore I’d never use my magick for anything besides restoration ever again. Not with their blood on my hands. Not that I expect you to understand,” he scorns, heavy guilt giving way to loud anger. “You make your living off of killing.”

There’s a long silence. Then Liam speaks. “I never wanted to be a killer.”

Harry turns away, not hiding a derisive snort. “Ah, yes. The tragic story of your parents, and the avenging son desperate to exact revenge on all manner of ill—”

“It’s not revenge,” Liam interrupts. “You don’t want me presuming you ‘cause you’re a witch, fine. But show me the same respect.”

“I don’t respect mankillers,” Harry says with a sniff.

“You’re referring to the werewolf.”

Harry says nothing, lets the silence speak for him.

“Harry, he _begged_ me to kill him.”

Harry tilts his head, brows furrowing in confusion.

“He’d killed four villagers, and two of his daughters, and turned one of his sons into a werewolf as well. Then he killed that son when they both were transformed.”

Breathing suddenly becomes more difficult for Harry. Liam continues, his voice soft but determined. “He begged me to do it. He didn’t want to keep hurting his family.”

His heart feels frozen in his chest.

“I didn’t want to do it, but he saw no other way. And then when I tried, he transformed—in his moment of peril, he transformed early, before the moon had risen. It was—” Liam’s voice catches. Harry can’t read minds, but the pain is evident, written on Liam’s twisted face.

“I don’t keep ‘trophies,’” he says bitterly. “I keep reminders of what we’re capable of. What I’m capable of. Every demon was once an innocent that walked the earth. If I have to kill to protect the rest of the innocents, then so be it. My hands are already dirty. But I’m not going to wash them clean if it means someone else has to join me in the dirt.”

Harry realizes he’s been clenching his hands into fists, hard enough that his palms hurt from where his nails have imprinted red crescents. He lets out a long slow breath. “You do it so they don’t have to.”

There’s a long moment in which the only sound is the creaking of the cords around Liam’s wrists. “I guess we’re not so different, you and I.”

“I reckon so.”

There’s another long silence, and Liam is the one to break it. “I’ve never met a good witch before. And before you tell me off—I swear it,” he says quickly, knowing they each consider the other on very thin ice. He doesn’t want to upset Harry by presuming to know all witches. “I’ve only met a few. But they were nothing like you and Anne.” Harry stares, staying quiet because he doesn’t want to comfort Liam in his prejudice, but knows that Liam is probably telling the truth. “I’m sorry for assuming you’d be like them. If you were…” he looks down at the cords tying him in place, and his voice is laced with hollow emotion. “I’d already be dead.” He lifts his head again, and Harry can read the wounded pride in his defeated expression.

Exhaustion overcomes Harry; the weight of hiding his true self from Liam has been lifted, but instead of simple relief he only feels soreness from bearing the weight.

And yet, he can’t quite get the words out, to apologize to Liam for assuming his intentions as a witch hunter, too. “I want to trust you, but that’s twice now you’ve aimed that bow at me.”

Liam’s countenance clouds and he twists in his bonds as both guilt and defiance war on his face. “If you conjured that thing--- the Vandrian,” he replies, “you’re not a simple forest witch. You know powerful magick.”

Harry doesn’t correct him, because Liam’s hit on the truth. He’s nowhere near Anne’s level, but he can easily overpower Liam if the moment called for it, as it just did.

“I think—I think we can both agree we share an enemy.”

Liam nods and pulls at his wrists again. “So, a truce?”

Harry sets his jaw and nods. He steps towards the elm and rests a hand on the lowest limb. The magicked branch uncurls from Liam’s neck and he cranes his head forward immediately, stretching it from its stiff position. The vines loosen and uncircle themselves from Liam’s wrists. He lowers and rubs the angry red marks they impressed in his wrists.

In a show of apology Harry turns and finds the place where he dropped Liam’s weapons, and gathers them into his arms. He ignores the tingly, static aura of the metal prickling his arms and holds them patiently while Liam straps them one by one back into place on his leather armor.

“Ready?” He turns and heads down the path, and hears Liam fall into step behind him.

He hears him chuckle under his breath. “The witch and the witch hunter.”

“You make a good point.” Harry doesn’t know why he suddenly feels manically happy, replacing the exhaustion from before. Maybe it’s that now he knows Liam is on his side against the Vandrian, and maybe they can actually do something about it. “Maybe you should lead. I don’t want to end up with an axe in my back.” He stops and turns to face Liam..

“I thought we’d determined this isn’t for you,” Liam says with another laugh, gesturing to the axe handle jutting over his shoulder.

“Once burned, twice shy,” Harry insists, gesturing in front of him for Liam to walk ahead.

It happens all at once.

He sees movement out of the corner of his eye, a few steps ahead of them, but before he can turn, he sees Liam reach for the axe handle and whip it forward. In one fluid motion he hurls it forward, and even before Harry can think to move he hears it land with a sickening crunch of metal on bone.

But it’s not meant for him. He turns, as if time has slowed, and sees a corpse fall to its knees a few feet in front of him, Liam’s axe sticking out of the side of its head.

“What the devil—”

“Blimey, was that—” Liam cuts himself off as Harry takes a step closer to the corpse. The smell is overpowering. He can’t believe it somehow snuck up on them. Its clothes are ragged and sagging off of the flesh; Harry’s gaze slides down its exposed arms pocked with maggots and holding a crude shillelagh with a pointed end, no doubt intended to be used against Harry’s head. Its hair is stringy and dead-looking and reminds Harry of the mold that grew off of one of Louis’ stickloaves when they left it in the humid soak shed for too long. But worst of all are the corpse’s eyes, which are white as milk and wide open in its undead glare.

“It’s a wight,” he says out loud. Liam hasn’t moved from his spot several feet behind him.

Harry straightens up. Although the wight is now certainly dead, thanks to Liam’s silver-plated axe, he can’t stop his heart from pounding. There’s something odd about this wight that jangles his nerves, as strange as if someone had woken him screaming in the middle of a dream. Perhaps it’s just that it almost killed him. He kicks the shillelagh out of its rotting hand and turns back to Liam, trying to steady himself so they can continue on. “Thanks,” he says shakily.

Liam nods and takes a half step back to give a deep bow in mock grandeur, all sweeping arms and twinkling eyes, and it’s enough to break the tension. Harry can’t help but laugh. How quickly the walls came down again. Deep down, he knew that this was who Liam was, all along -- the handsome rogue with a good heart and the quick hands, who just happened to defend with a sword instead of with magick. He smiles warmly at Liam as he doffs an invisible cap in Harry’s direction.

Then there’s another impossibly fast movement, and Liam straightens up, turning his head this way and that, only for another wight to appear behind him and thrust a sword up through Liam’s chest.

Liam makes a gurgling noise, and strangely, it reminds Harry of a suckling calf before it’s been weaned, a weak, defenseless creature, nothing at all like Liam, nothing at all like his surprised expression with blood now trickling out of his mouth.

He keels forward, and Harry doesn’t even hear the scream coming from his own mouth.

* * *

Ten

* * *

The first thing Liam thinks when we awakes is that some bastard has sewn a burning charcoal inside his chest. It singes his lungs, smears ash on his ribs, and sends fresh sparks of pain skittering through his nerves with every wheezing breath.

The second thing he notices is that it’s so dark that he blinks a few times to make sure that his eyes are indeed open. Wherever he is – it’s inside, with no near-full moon to shine through the treetops. He’s no longer in the forest. He feels a draft against his arms, but it’s not strong enough to be from outside—he realizes he is naked from the waist up.

He’s lying on some sort of soft hide that cushions his back to the floor. But when he reaches to sit up, he realizes that his hands are tied separately on each side of his body, and a fear so visceral shoots through him that the pain in his chest doubles.

He closes his eyes tightly and strains, but the rope binding his wrists holds tight, tied to whatever he can’t see on either side of him. His struggles only cause his limbs to ache. He relaxes his arms and focuses on breathing deeply to clear his head, to fight through the pain and try to recall the strange dream he’d just had.

They had been in the forest. His heart quickens again at the hallucination of Harry standing before him. A barrage of emotions: hostility, then anguish, then peace, and then something had come over him. He shuts his eyes tighter, straining to remember. The feeling, once again, that all the air had vanished, that something was wrong. And then the flurry of darkened movement, and out of nowhere, the wight had tried to attack Harry.

And then, pain. Liam gasps out loud at the memory of it, of looking down and seeing the rusted blade protruding from his own chest, of feeling the coppery wetness of blood rush into his mouth and coat his tongue, of the forgiveness of autumn’s bed of leaves against his knees as he sank downward.

A scream that wasn’t his, couldn’t have been his, because he could not draw a breath, not with the sword skewering him. And a blinding flash of light, so red that he thought his eyes, too, had filled with blood, until it faded to lavender, lavender with a gold trim… but it wasn’t light, it was a tunic, and above it a mop of brown curls and Harry, Harry’s face, his mouth moving but no sound coming out, no sound that Liam could hear at least… and Harry’s hands, strangely soft and strong against his cheeks, holding his head upright, and then his chest, and a ripping noise, and then…

Liam opens his eyes and gasps again, now conscious that he’s covered in a sheen of sweat. He can’t recall anything past the ripping noise—because he can’t, or because he doesn’t want to, he isn’t sure and he isn’t willing to find out. But it was awful, a slick rasping sound that felt tangible from inside his body as well as through his ears.

He has enough to think about without going down that rabbit hole. Where was he? Where was Harry? Why was he tied to the floor? He shakes his head to clear it and looks around, trying to find some pinprick of light to orient himself and fight himself out of these bonds. The last thing he remembers is Harry, Harry’s a witch, and now he’s tied, half-naked, with crippling pain in his chest and unspoken words in his mouth.

After a few seconds, the air fills with a golden light. It’s bright enough for Liam to flinch and attempt to cover his eyes with his hands. But since he can’t, he twists his head to the left and scrunches his eyes shut. It doesn’t help; the light seems to be coming from everywhere at the same time.

“Who’s there?” he croaks.

The light immediately dims a few degrees, enough so that Liam can crack open an eyelid and turn his head to see a tall figure stepping closer.

“Is it still too bright?”

It’s Harry’s voice, and the sound of it makes Liam’s heartbeat quicken again. “Where am I? Why am I tied up?” He can’t keep the antagonism from his voice—Harry’s appearance confirms his suspicion that Harry had taken him here, bound him here against his will.

“You need to relax.”

Liam opens his eyes fully as they adjust to the light; Harry is closing in on him with a worried look on his face and a bundle of sticks in his arms. Liam tries to shrink away from Harry and is rewarding with fresh agony in his chest for his efforts. “Don’t come any closer.” He manages to hold his tongue from spitting out, _witch_.

To his surprise, Harry stops. He stares at Liam for a long moment, and Liam can’t read his shuttered expression. Then Harry kneels down a few feet from Liam and lets the sticks fall in a clatter. By lifting his head, Liam can see ashes beneath the sticks, and knows that Harry must have lit a fire in the same space before.

He looks around, but still can’t figure out where the light is coming from; it seems to emit from the air itself. From the looks of it, he’s in a cave. He can see the darkly shaded hole from which Harry entered, but no other feasible exit. The floor is dusty and strewn with small animal skeletons.

“Where am I?” Liam repeats.

Harry rests on the balls of his feet, squatted down with his arms in front of his knees, his body in profile view of Liam. He holds his hands out in front of him, and in a few seconds, fingers of flame erupt from his palms and alight the kindling in the ashy dirt. Harry adjusts the angle of a few of the burning sticks and replies, without looking at Liam: “I found a bear cave where you could rest.”

Liam’s a little confused by Harry’s choice of words, but has more pressing questions. “Why am I tied up?”

Harry finally turns his head to look at him. “You were in pain, and wouldn’t lie still. You were trying to tear your chest open with your hands.” He pauses, his eyes not leaving Liam’s. “Again.”

Liam’s eyes travel down past his chin to stare at his chest. Now that it’s light inside, he can see an ugly welt that extends from his collarbone almost to his navel, bright purple along the darkest stroke and fading lighter and lighter as it spiderwebs along his ribcage. For a moment, the vision is replaced by one of earlier, in the forest, of Liam staring down at his chest to see a sword erupting from his shirt, its shiny metallic gleam dulled by his scarlet blood.

His first emotion is one of revulsion. This isn’t his body. This is scarred, barely whole. The body of a warrior who’s seen his last battle.

But then…

He’d had a sword sticking out of his chest. He saw it, felt it, and even in the seconds before shock took over, he knew it meant his end. But it wasn’t - he was still here, lying on the ground in this cave, cold and aching and very much alive. No mortal could survive a wound like that. Not without help.

He feels his breathing quicken again. It wasn’t a dream. He should be dead. The reality weighs on him as much as the pain.

Harry turns back to the crackling fire, pokes a few more sticks into place with a larger one. “What was the last thing you remember?”

Liam doesn’t have to think back very hard. “You,” he says quietly, like it’s a secret. “You’re a witch.”

Instead of responding, Harry continues staring into the fire. He folds his arms over his knees and hugs them to himself. The dancing flames send shadows skittering across his intent expression. He’s so still that Liam’s heart pounds fit to burst while he waits for a reaction, a rebuttal, a counterattack.

It doesn’t come, and Liam, on edge, swallows tightly, knowing he has to say it, has to let the knowledge exist in the world outside of his head, because he thinks he always knew deep down that of course it hadn’t been a dream. He’d had a rusted blade straight through his ribs, but it had been healed.

“You’re a witch, and you saved me.”

It’s hard to tell in the flickering light of the fire, but Liam thinks he sees the corner of Harry’s mouth turn upward.

He’s not really sure what he expects Harry to say; in fact, he’s not sure he wants him to say anything. He knows by now that this is what they both do: they save people. He doesn’t want to say it out loud, but a small part of him wonders if Harry didn’t just save him because Liam’s saved Harry twice now. Maybe, Liam allows himself to hope, he saved him because he, Harry, wants to.

At last, Harry lifts his chin from his knees. “If I untie you, will you promise not to rip open your chest?”

Liam nods and lets the slight disappointment of Harry not acknowledging his thanks slip from his mind. “I won’t.”

Harry rests a hand on the dusty ground beside him, and it’s like a small tremor courses through the cave floor until it passes through the stake that Liam’s right hand is tied to, and the rope immediately unknots itself and falls motionless to the ground. He feels the tremor pass beneath him to the other wrist, and the rope once again melts off.

He rubs his wrists where the cords cut into him and lifts his hands to his face to examine the red marks. “Thanks, I suppose.” He slips back into their braced familiarity, to formal to be considered friendly but perhaps somewhere in between.

Harry nods, a stray lock of hair falling against his nose. Liam watches him in profile for a moment before he takes a deep breath to try and sit up.

It’s harder than he would have believed, with pain shooting through his spine at every minute motion. He braces his hands behind his elbows and rests his weight on them, gritting his teeth while pulling his legs underneath him.

And then Harry is behind him, his hands on Liam’s bare back, with that gentle strength that Liam recalls from his not-dream, and the pain seems to lessen long enough for him to rest against the cave wall, his feet flat in front of him and tickled by the fire’s warmth.

Harry pulls his hands away and shuffles back to the fire, once more crouching on the balls of his feet. Liam shifts against the wall, trying to find a position where the craggy surface doesn’t dig into his back. “How did you even get me in here?”

There’s a flash of a grin on Harry’s face. “Not easily. You’re difficult to carry when you’re angry.”

Liam lets his head rest against the cave wall and grins back. “Angry?”

“Once you realized the sword was out of you, you wanted to kill the wight.”

“Well? Did I?” he asks with a chuckle, then winces as his chest spasms in pain from the laugh.

“It was already dead.”

Harry’s answer is flat, and his gaze is back in the fire.

Liam tilts his head. He remembers the flash of bloodred light, the ripping noise. “What… what did you do?”

Harry lets his head drop, runs a hand through his hair. He succeeds in pushing it out of his eyes for a second and then immediately falls back onto his brow. “I honestly don’t know.”

Something—alarm, suspicion—clenches in Liam’s stomach. “What does that mean? What exactly happened after it stabbed me?”

Harry picks up a twig and snaps it in half, rolls it between his fingers for a few seconds before tossing it into the fire. “It was the Branmill twins.”

Branmill. The name curdles in Liam’s ears at the connotation. Liam remembers his confusion after throwing the axe at the first one’s head. He knew it looked familiar. “The brothers we found crucified?”

“Somehow they came back to life. Undead, as wights. I don’t know how. The Vandrian, I suppose. Your axe blade stopped the one. Freathen. Used to work for the miller. Then Unferth, the other one—he used to transport cloth for the widows—he was the one that stabbed you.”

“What happened?” Liam grows impatient, wondering what Harry is reluctant to tell him.

His head drops forward again and he runs another hand through it. “I don’t know. I saw you fall down. I yelled something. Then it was dead.” He pauses before opening his mouth again. “Some sort of magick. I’ve never done it before.” He lifts wide eyes to Liam’s. “I’ve never killed before.”

Liam runs his tongue over his top lip, feeling the beginnings of scruff there. “You killed that hellhound.”

“That was different.” His gaze hasn’t left Liam’s; it’s like he’s searching, desperately, for consolation. “Unferth came to the inn once a week to pick up rosewater for the widows.”

“He wasn’t Unferth,” Liam reassures quickly. “He was a wight. You said so yourself. A wight, using Unferth’s body. You put Unferth to rest, that’s what you did.”

He can see Harry’s chest rise and fall in ragged breaths, as if he doesn’t quite believe Liam. Harry’s hands flop to the ground with palms up. Idle hands that don’t know how to carry the weight of death.

But Liam doesn’t want to drop it—not yet. “What sort of magick? Can you use it on the Vandrian?”

Harry shakes his head hastily, for longer than necessary before speaking again. “I can’t. I don’t know how. I… it took watching you get stabbed for me to access it. Is that how you want to fight?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Harry barks out a hollow laugh, which dies in his throat when he realizes Liam is completely serious.

“You can just bring me back to life again.”

Another vehement head shake. “No. Besides, it won’t be the same, to use you as bait. I think the whole point was that I wasn’t expecting it, and I just reacted. Whatever magick I did… I can’t plan on consciously using it.”

“Fine.” Liam has only known Harry a few weeks, but it’s long enough to know when he’s up against the supernatural stubbornness. “But it’s not enough to just find Zayn. Samhain’s getting closer. We have to stop him. What options do we have?”

Harry stares into the fire for long enough that Liam almost has to ask if Harry heard him. At last he speaks: “It’s not a ‘him.’”

Liam blinks. “What?”

“The Vandrian. It’s not a ‘him.’” He breaks another twig into pieces before chucking them into the fire.

“Then what is it?”

“It’s… an ‘it.’ A darkness. Like an inside-out of a demon, but the worst demon you’ve ever dreamed of.” He breaks another stick in half, and Liam hears the tension in his voice. “I don’t even know if it has a physical form.”

“Then how does it kill? How does it move bodies? Crucify them?”

“As far as I can tell, it possesses other beings. Borrows their bodies, mutilates them.”

Liam thinks, and his mind arrives back on the image of the wight crumpling beneath his silver axeblade. “When it’s in a body… can it be killed then?”

“I don’t know."

Liam's pain is shortening his patience. “Can we try?”

Another twig snaps and drops into the fire. It takes Liam a second to realize that Harry is levitating it; his arms are crossed over each other and he rests his chin on his forearms while he watches the flames lick upwards. At last, he nods. “I think I can bind it, somehow. I think that’s what Mum wanted to do.”

"Your mum? I thought she left Glenfallow to celebrate Samhain with her sister."

"She's coming back." Harry shakes his head again. "She was supposed to be back by now. Not that it matters, since she doesn't know we're in the wood. She was going to help find a way to contain it."

“It sounds like,” Liam says slowly, “our best plan is to try to coax it into some physical form, and if you can bind it, we can destroy it together. My dagger is silver; I have a few arrows tipped with gold. If it's good enough for a vampire, it should be good enough for the Vandrian when it takes a physical form." He waits for Harry to respond, but he's staring into the fire again. Liam pushes, "We can’t afford to wait.”

Harry at last rouses to action. He hefts his weight to his knees to reach into his pocket and withdraws something in his fist. “I set a boundary around the city, to keep the Vandrian out. It worked as long as it was in place. One of the village boys knocked over a bastion and that’s how the Gwyllgi got in.” His palm opens and in the aura-light that fills the cave, Liam can see two milky white stones, each worn and rounded to the size of a walnut. Harry rolls them in his hand and watches the firelight flicker off the smooth tops. “The boundary is obsidian and chicken’s blood. I think… I think if I do the opposite, it will do the reverse. Create a sort of field that it can’t escape.”

“So… is that the opposite of the obsidian, then?” Liam asks as he nods at the stones in Harry’s outstretched hand. “What is it? And what’s the opposite of chicken’s blood?”

Harry clenches his fist around the stones and shoves them back into the pocket of his trousers. “It’s moonstone. I think it will work. And I’ll add the egg white from a bird’s egg. If only--" he pauses, then pulls the stones out to stare at them again. "I need a transmuter to conduct the magick.”

"A transmuter?"

"Dittany would be best. But I think a different mushroom would work. Something wet, from a bog."

“All right. So, you create this binding field, then we force it into a solid form. Then I lay into it with everything I've got. And whatever you can spare.” He eyes Harry's hands, recalling the memory of the magick that had come forth and struck down the wight.

Slowly, Harry nods. “I know you’re right. I just don’t like it.”

"Seems like that's a good summation of how you feel about me," Liam says with a smile.

Harry looks at him quickly, his eyes wide, until the surprise of Liam’s jab dissolves into a warm, if bashful, grin. "I... I don't..." he trails off, and Liam can't tell if it's the fire or a flush that causes Harry's cheeks to glow.

And then Liam, too, feels himself flush, because there’s no answering retort, no dry quip to push Liam back to arm’s length like every other time before. Liam looks down at his boots and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

"It's been a while since I hated you," Harry says thickly, once more absently poking a stick into the fire. "I was just thinking." He swallows, then lifts his head to meet Liam's gaze. "If we do this... and somehow, we get out alive... maybe you could stay."

"Stay?" The word sounds foreign on Liam's tongue. He hasn't had a home since he was twelve, never slept in the same bed for more than a month since he was fifteen.

Harry clears his throat and busies himself with the remaining kindling over the fire. "Sorry, I know you don’t want to. Questing, and all.” His eyes flit to the pile of Liam’s weapons close to the entrance of the cave. His voice sounds tight and strained. “We’ve both got to protect, haven’t we? Other towns have their own Vandrians.”

Liam pauses, the weight of Harry's words settling on him like a blanket. He hasn’t ever considered setting down his bow and his blade and limiting himself to the outskirts of a single town. The thought of it, of not being actively on his way to help the next village, the next family, frightens him. What would he be living for, if not in quest of the next evil?

But… the temptation of one hearth, one bed, does take root in his thoughts. He could never imagine himself in a house like the one of his childhood in Wolverhampton, the house marred by blood and bone and unspeakable pain. But what if it wasn’t a house -- what if it was an inn? An inn with travelers to bring word of new evils and monsters from afar, an inn with good meat and better mead, an inn where he knew his bed was steadfastly protected by a pair of witches? Not to stay, perhaps, not forever. But to rest between quests. A familiar place (and a familiar face) to which he’d return each time. A _home_.

The allure of a future in Glenfallow comes on as suddenly as it does strongly. Liam blinks and realizes Harry has turned away, his hair once more falling forward to hide his eyes. “It was just an idea,” Harry mumbles. “I should’ve known better than to presume--”

“Would I be staying with you?” Liam interjects.

The force of his voice makes Harry look up swiftly. The hot ember has returned to Liam’s chest, but this time the heat is warm, excited, and pulsing. Harry’s lips part. “You would want…?”

“Yes, I would. Between hunts, of course. Or for the winter, if you’ll have me. I can’t stop hunting and I won’t.” Harry’s face darkens but he doesn’t drop Liam’s gaze. He swallows again, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he nods. “But, I like Glenfallow. And--”

His voice sticks again. He just can’t get the words out: “ _I like you_.”

He’s not sure he needs to. Harry’s face lightens again, and his warm grin seems to brighten the cavern as much as the magickal light. The strange heat fills Liam’s chest again.

Harry shuffles a step sideways, then reaches out a hand towards Liam. Liam reaches his own up and then falters with a grimace as a shooting pain descends from his shoulder towards his abdomen. He opens his eyes to Harry’s concerned face only a few inches from his own.

Liam tries a bracing grin but even that fails. “Might be getting ahead of ourselves,” he cracks. “It’s going to be tough to fight the Vandrian when I can’t even stand without help.” But damned if he wasn’t going to try. He shoves his hands downward to push himself to his feet, only to feel Harry’s smooth hand bearing down on his chest to stop him. Liam tries to swat Harry’s hand away. “I don’t have a choice, Harry. Let me try.”

“I could heal you.”

The offer hangs in the air and Liam stops short, hand against the wall, staring at Harry. “You can? Beyond this?” He looks down at his mangled chest.

Harry nods. “I couldn’t when you were unconscious. I need you to eat this first.” He digs into his rucksack and pulls out a vial of something black and viscous, too solid to be liquid, but too fluid to be solid.

“Then give it here. Believe it or not, I don’t fancy this shooting agony through my spine with every breath.”

Harry stands up and uncorks the vial before handing it to Liam, then gestures to the animal skins he’d laid Liam on as a bed. “You need to lie down right after you drink it. I have to touch the wound,” he explains, and holds up his hands with fingers outstretched to illustrate.

“All right,” Liam says, starting to feel a little wary of Harry doing magick directly on his body. “You’ve done this before?”

“Ask Louis about the time Fizzy fell too close to the bread oven,” Harry replies.

Liam nods, content with Harry's own attestation, and shuffles his body so that he can prop himself up on the furs. “Cheers,” he says. He’s relieved that Harry has already uncorked it for him, as the simple motion of raising the vial to his lips makes his stomach muscles screech in protest. He upends the vial onto his tongue and swallows it quickly.

It tastes as revolting as it looks, like rotted beetroot mixed with tar, and he shudders with disgust before allowing Harry to help him lie supine.

“Ready?”

“You tell me,” Liam says, hoping his cheeky tone is enough to shield his nervousness.

Harry lays his hands against Liam’s bare chest, and Liam tries to hold back a grunt of pain at the mere contact. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth to steady himself.

“ _Leigheas eile_ ,” Harry mutters Gaelig words that Liam doesn’t understand. His hands grow warm; Liam can feel the heat through the wound itself. At first the heat is not altogether unpleasant, but soon it grows to a temperature that makes him sweat again. His breath catches at the mounting pain. “ _Leigheas eile_ ,” Harry repeats, firmer, and Liam gasps at the sudden sensation of someone ripping open his chest from his neck to his waist and sewing another lump of coal inside him. He keeps his jaw clenched and tries not to moan in agony.

Another minute and it’s no use; Liam feels like his very ribs must be separating, and that his heart must be stretching itself to a new size, and that his lungs are dissolving into molten tar.

It’s a pain he’s felt the depths of only once before, on a midsummer night just a few full moons ago, where he lay with his leg bleeding and broken in two places, one hand still wrapped around the werewolf’s throat while the other dug the silver blade deeper into its breast. And the werewolf had shifted back into his manflesh in its dying breaths, and Liam had thrown himself off of its body and hauled himself as far as he could from its ragged gasps, had limped over the young corpses of its children, the were-boy and the two little girls, and the man had whispered “Thank you,” and Liam had tumbled out the door of the hovel and fallen on to his knees, broken and all, and had vomited out the pain and the anguish and the horror of a man who had killed the children he’d been sworn to protect.

The pain is intolerable. Liam’s mind is blank but for it, all conscious thought edged out by the all-consuming spasms of torment. He can feel every drop of blood aching to burst forth from his veins. Everything is heat and dark and pain. He lets out a harsh groan and writhes beneath Harry’s palms, and he reaches out to grab Harry’s wrist when all of a sudden, the pain vanishes.

Liam lies still, chest heaving as he catches his breath, and slowly opens his eyes. He’s still clutching Harry’s wrist. Harry stares down at him, hands still pressed against him, anxiety written on his face, as if he’s afraid to move.

It’s a moment frozen in time. Liam stares up at Harry, and he feels every heartbeat thud in his ears. There’s no more pain. He can feel it with every gasp of breath.

Harry pulls back, but Liam doesn’t release his grip on Harry’s wrist, which makes Harry stop, hovering over Liam, eyes written with concern.

“You don’t have to let go.”

He stares down at Liam, who feels the heat slide from his chest to his waist, and then again lower. He can see Harry’s chest pitching too, his bottom lip quivers as his mouth opens. “Liam--”

“Yes,” Liam murmurs, and he uses the hand still on Harry’s wrist to pull him down on top of him.

Harry wears a day-old beard on his chin that scratches Liam’s own, but it’s a light pain, a gentle tease tempered by the soft lips that Harry peppers over Liam’s cheeks, neck, chest. Liam’s hands twist into soft curls and he lets out another moan that’s as different as can be from just a few minutes before, a moan of want, of relief, of pleasure.

It seems to take both a moment and an eternity as their limbs tangle on the sheepskin rug. Liam delights in his newfound freedom from pain, and in the soft sighs of Harry against his chest. “Harry,” he breathes. His eyes seem even greener in the magick-light of the cave, and when he tugs off Harry’s tunic he can’t help but stare at the inked multitude on his lean, hairless chest. His thumbs trace over the lifelike sparrows, the butterfly, and finally the vines at his hips, whose blackness he first sighted weeks ago on his first day at the inn.

Harry doesn’t let him stare long and lowers himself against Liam’s chest. His knees lock between Liam’s, who can feel his need hardening beside his own. “Harry,” he moans again, a hoarse whisper that catches in his throat. Harry stops him with his lips and Liam leans into it, feeling Harry’s heated tongue against his.

Liam can feel his heart thudding louder and louder in his ears as Harry works his hands downward. A few well-chosen Gaelig murmurs and he can feel Harry’s hands on his erection, brushed up against his own hardness, and Liam gasps as Harry begins stroking both of their shafts. They’re both slick with something Liam cannot begin to guess, something from one of Harry’s invocations, and he finds himself once more under the curious condition of blank-mindedness, this time from pleasure rather than pain. The only sensation he feels, or wants to feel, is Harry against him, so close that he cannot sense where he ends and Harry begins.

He crushes his forehead to Harry’s, eyes screwed shut, and feels the odd rush of wings flapping against his cheeks. Even that is not enough to distract him from the warmth of Harry’s grip on him. He can feel his climax coming from a long way off, and he rocks his head back and stiffens beneath Harry, allowing Harry to coax it forward, to pull him from the rushes until he digs his nails into Harry’s arms and cries out with the peaking pleasure that shoots from his erection to every crevice of his body.

They lie still, the two of them, with Harry’s cheek against Liam’s collarbone, and Liam opens his eyes to see two sparrows eyeing him beadily from across the cave.

A laugh rumbles through his torso, which vibrates Harry’s head in its resting place. “Are those…?”

“Yeah. They leave me sometimes.”

Liam’s hands are still wrapped around Harry’s biceps. Lean, but strong. “No matter what happens tonight,” he swears, “I’m glad to have known you.”

Harry lifts his head to rest his chin against Liam’s breastbone, a coy grin playing at his lips. “Are we doing formal thank you’s now?”

Blushing red, Liam sticks out his lip. “I wanted to tell you, just in case--”

Harry pushes himself off Liam’s chest and mutters another incantation that vanishes the come from both their bodies with a wave of his hand. “We’ll have to work on your bedside manner. But let’s not talk like we might not win,” he says. “We have to destroy it, or it will destroy Glenfallow.”

Liam pushes himself to his elbows, once more pleasantly surprised that he can no longer feel even a twinge of residual pain. Still, he’s almost too afraid to test his new pain-free body and stretches his legs out tentatively. “Do you have my armor?”

“Yes.” Harry turns behind him and digs in a pile beneath his rucksack. He tosses Liam his blouse first. “I should mention… I can mend bones but I can’t mend clothing.”

Liam holds up his shirt. He can see through the two giant holes in his shirt to the cave wall opposite, and purses his lips at the dried bloodstains. “Better than nothing,” he says with a shrug, and tugs it over his head.

“Yeah.” When Liam’s head emerges from his tunic, he sees Harry holding his armored vest, fingering the left breast. He looks back at Liam. “Is this one from the werewolf?” he asks quietly.

He’s referring to the trophies that Liam has decorated his vest with: incisors from staked vampires, metacarpals from wights, tokens from poltergeists and ghosts.

Harry’s finger grazes over the wolfsfang sewn into the left breast. “Yes,” Liam says simply. He knows it’s still a tenuous subject between them, but the fang is worth more to him than Harry’s opinion. “You thought they were signs of my arrogance, but they’re the opposite. They remind me how close I am to the Otherworld, and what my role is.”

Liam can’t really read Harry’s expression; his head is bowed, and the firelight dances upon his cheekbones. Finally, he looks up and hands the vest to Liam. “You told me you didn’t want to be a deadbolt anymore.”

Liam’s cheeks color at the memory. That night in the inn, when he’d had a little too much to drink and felt his kinship with the people of Glenfallow a little too keenly.

“Sometimes what I want is less important than what needs to be done,” he says and takes the vest. It, too, has two tears in it from the blade, but none of the straps are broken, so he can still carry his weaponry without issue.

There’s one thing missing, though—“Was there… a necklace?” Liam asks. He can feel the weight of it missing, has felt it since he opened his eyes.

Harry looks surprised, and he digs through his rucksack and pulls out a silver medallion on a leather strap. He hefts it in his palm. “What’s this one from?”

Liam holds out his hand, suddenly reluctant to share the history of this particular trapping. “My father gave it to me before he died,” he says.

“Sorry,” Harry says quickly, and almost pushes the medallion towards Liam. “Didn’t mean to pry.” He pauses. “It just seems… more than the rest of them, somehow.”

“It is. It means more,” Liam says as he lowers the circle over his head. He tucks it inside his vest and blouse, but he doesn’t explain further.

He uses the wall again to brace himself, still unsure of the lack of pain in his chest, but he can stand without help. His legs are a little shaky, but Liam tells himself it’s from the shock of the last few hours more than anything else.

“Need a hand?” Harry asks. His voice is gentle but Liam shakes his head.

“You’ve given me enough.” He takes a tottering step forward, hand still on the cave wall, and then lets out a cry of disgust. His hand has passed into a shadowed pocket of the cave and met with something wet and slimy. Liam draws his hand back and looks at it in the light of the fire: it's green, and glowing with an almost unnatural paleness.

"Blimey," Liam says and lowers his hand to wipe it on his trousers. Before he can, Harry's hand darts out and catches it, pulling it closer to his face to examine it. "You know what it is?"

Harry doesn't hide the grin breaking out on his face. "It's dittany."

* * *

Eleven 

* * *

It’s almost midday when they step outside the cave; Liam has slept through the night and the better part of the morning before waking up. “Three sundowns til Samhain,” Harry says. He's bolstered by the discovery of the dittany cache, but still worried; each day that passes means a thinner veil between Earth and the Otherworld.

Liam acts like an entirely different man than the one that had set out last night. He checks the straps on his armor and the accessibility of his weapons before gazing lazily up at the sky to check the sun. “You said you know where its nest is?”

Harry nods. He doesn’t tell Liam about the will o’ the wisp that he captured and questioned three years ago, who spoke of a creeping shadow that lingered in the leeward side of Hob’s Bluff. Even though the secret’s out, it feels strange to talk about his supernatural encounters to someone whose sole purpose is to exterminate them. “This way.”

They walk for hours, until the sun sits low in the sky. At first Harry is eager, infected by Liam’s enthusiasm to do something about the Vandrian, even if they only have a half-formed plan. But with each passing furlong he feels his feet grow heavier with dread. It’s only a half-formed plan, and the Vandrian is without a doubt the last creature on this world he wants to meet, plan or not.

But he has to try. And it will be its most powerful on Samhain night, so they only have two more nights to stop it.

They stop near a trickling waterfall to replenish their water jugs/skins, and Liam shoots a rabbit to roast over Harry’s conjured fire. Harry tries to keep to his carrots and bread, but the scent of the cooking hare is too tempting. He gives into his grumbling stomach and ends up sharing a leg with Liam. Then they’re off again, deeper into the wood, heading slightly uphill towards the slope of Hob’s Bluff.

He wishes he hadn’t eaten so much as they pace up the hill; he’s fighting a stitch in his side as the trees grow taller, the leaves grow thicker, and the light grows dimmer.

“How much farther?” Liam asks as he waits for Harry at the top of a small rise. The ground in front of them flattens for the length of a clearing before the tree line begins again, and then inclines sharper than before.

Harry rests his hands on his knees for a moment before straightening up. “An hour, maybe two.”

Then there’s a crash like the crack of thunder, and everything goes black.

“Liam!” Harry yells, reaching out with his hand. he can't even see his hand in front of his face, it’s so dark. He finds Liam’s shoulder, but Liam is already launching into his hunter instincts; he can feel Liam remove his bow and string it quickly, hear the rustle of an arrow leave the quiver as Liam nocks it. Through his panic he feels a slight comfort in Liam’s readiness, even though he’s not sure how helpful a bow and arrow if neither of them can see a single thing.

The wind has picked up; Harry can feel the leaves at his feet blowing up and around; the roar is incredible. He can barely hear Liam shuffling in the bed of leaves as he aims his bow wildly in front of them. His hair whips back and forth in the wind; if it wasn’t pitch black, he wouldn’t be able to see through his own flying locks.

“Where’s your spell?” Liam shouts over the raging wind.

Harry grits his teeth. Liam has no appreciation for the focus required for magick, especially magick as powerful as this. He digs into his pockets for the moonstone, slippery with the egg white and dittany he rubbed them in during their meal.

He doesn’t know how to attempt this, not when he can’t see and there’s seemingly no enemy to contain. _Think_ , he tells himself. He feels Liam’s hand on his arm, seeking him out, holding him close so he doesn’t lose him in the darkness. _Try_.

If he can’t see the Vandrian, he’ll just assume that he’s everywhere. “Hold onto me, but stay behind me,” he shouts to Liam, who squeezes his upper arm in reply.

He kneels down and presses one of the moonstones into the ground at his feet, resting his palm against it, and mutters the protective boundary spell. He can barely hear his own words over the screaming wind, but the stone is heavy enough to stay put.

He stands up, walks forward five steps, and crouches again. He can feel Liam behind him; he’s swapped his bow for his sword. The negative aura of the metal seeps into Harry’s skin and makes it prickle.

Another spell, and this time Harry thinks the wind blows harder. There’s a definite volume increase, the gale absolutely howling now. Although this frightens Harry, it renews his determination. He feels Liam squeeze his shoulder again and his lips at his ear. “I think it’s working!”

Harry paces forward and to his left, five more paces. Another stone, another spell. Another shriek of wind, definitely louder than before. He has to battle to walk forward now, five paces, leaves whipping his face and arms. He shields his face and almost drops the fourth stone. He places it carefully and repeats the Gaelig incantation into the gale.

The wind lashes so strongly that it feels almost solid. He actually gasps at the force of it, and if he didn’t have Liam behind him, now with both hands braced against his shoulders to keep him upright, he would fall flat on his back. The two of them struggle forward, one grueling step at a time, and it takes ten steps to where Harry knows, instinctively, that the fifth arm of the pentacle would lie. He lowers the stone, yells his spell to be heard over the storm.

Suddenly the blackness recedes, and the wind recedes to an autumn breeze that only stirs up the fallen leaves in the grove. Harry blinks in the sudden brightness and turns to see Liam rubbing his eyes, the wind ruffling his hair into an impressive bird’s nest.

Then there’s another crack like thunder, and Harry and Liam stagger backward, away from the moonstone pentagram. Harry gasps again.

The circle has solidified into a band of blue-white light, one foot wide and hovering six feet off the ground. And inside the cage, straining to get loose, is a teeming mass of shadows and darkness thrashing with such fury that it looks like thick black vipers tangling with each other to free themselves of the binding.

Another thunderclap. From behind the shadowbeing, from the other side of the clearing, a four-legged creature bounds into view. Harry recoils at the sight; scaly, mottled flesh, a bare skull gleaming in the light, and seeping, glowing eyes. Another hellhound; it’s smaller than the one that crossed into Glenfallow, and Harry wonders for a moment if this is the new Gwyllgi to replace the one he already killed.

It barrels towards them, and Harry lifts his hands to chant a protection spell. But before he can, an arrow flies from behind and strikes the hellwolf in the heart. The Gwyllgi gives a pathetic yelp and skids forward, not dead but wounded, trying to find its feet under itself, but Liam is already charging forward, his axe clutched in both hands.

Harry closes his eyes as Liam swings, and in a short moment he hears the thud of metal on flesh. He opens his eyes; Liam stands over the body, waving at Harry to come closer. “Burn it!” he yells.

The wind picks up again, blasting leaves into their faces, and the dark turgid mass at the center of the clearing also roils in anger.

“ _Liam_.”

They both hear it; a horrible, guttural voice that they hear within their heads rather than with their ears. “ _He’s a witch_.”

Harry stares, open-mouthed. The white-light binding the evil snarl begins to buckle and crackle.

“ _You know what you must do._ ”

Liam doesn’t even hesitate. He clamps his hands over his ears and shuts his eyes, dropping his axe in the process. “He’s my friend!” he roars.

It happens quickly. One of the feeler-like ropes from within the shadow presence breaks free of the binding and shoots out with the speed of an arrow. It punctures Liam in the chest, right where the wight’s sword had stabbed through him.

Liam screams; Harry runs. Liam hits the ground and the feeler retreats back within the binding, mission accomplished. Harry lifts his arms; he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but this feels right; he points his arms at the binding, energy coiling tight in his forearms and pooling in his palms, and lets out a howl.

Whatever he’s said, it worked; the binding grows to almost encapsulate the entire shadow, and Harry doesn’t stop to watch. He runs to Liam, who’s collapsed on the ground, clutching at the bloody mess of his chest.

“It got me, Harry, it got me—”

“You’ll be fine, Liam, stay with me,” Harry chants, “you’ll be fine—”

Liam’s hands scrabble all over his chest, and Harry fears he’ll dig his own hands into the wound like he did before. He doesn’t know what the dark magick will do to someone’s insides, but he has a shuddering feeling that there are two dozen dead villagers of Glenfallow who do know.

He mutters a healing spell, a restoration spell, but nothing slows Liam’s shuddering gasps or the desperate haves of his ribs. “Harry—“

Harry shushes Liam. “You’ll be fine, look, I’ve healed the hole—“

“Harry.”

They hear the voice in their head again, and Harry flinches. He turns his head. The binding is still holding, but the wind has picked up again.

“ _You cannot contain me_.”

He feels Liam’s hand on his wrist, warm, calloused, heart pounding. Harry looks down at Liam, who’s staring up at him with desperate, searching eyes. “You have to,” Liam says, his voice almost a whisper, words almost torn away by the whistling wind before Harry can catch them. “We have to try.”

Harry’s resolve hardens. It’s like he can suddenly shut out the chaos coursing through the clearing, coursing through his mind. His heart stops hammering and slows to a steady pound, his eyes locked in Liam's damp brown ones, steadying him. "I know." He bends down and kisses the top of Liam’s head, then pushes his weight to his heels to stand up. He lifts his hands to reinforce the containment spell, his face set.

“I can, and I will.”

But when he turns to face the monster, he staggers forward, aghast, gaping at the scene in front of him.

Despite the binding, despite the blue-white bands of light circling the blackness, a figure steps forward, passing through the binding as if it were nothing more than a ray of sunlight. A woman. She wears flowing white garments, her bare feet strikingly white against the leaf-covered ground.

“Harry,” she says in a voice so familiar Harry swears his heart stops.

“Gemma?”

It’s her, but she’s older now, no longer a teenager but a young woman. But his eyes freeze on her face. Her eyes are empty white sockets that stare at him, through him.

It's Gemma, but it isn't.

It’s enough to distract him, enough for the blackness to bow out, to sweep the wind faster and harder, to make Harry stagger to remain upright.

“What’s happening?” Liam cries from Harry’s feet, but Harry doesn’t answer. It takes all his strength to keep his arms raised, to keep his mind on conjuring the field around the Vandrian and not cry out at the ghostly mirage in front of him.

“Harry. You know what I want.” She’s close enough to reach out and cup his face; her hands are cold, so cold, that he cringes back, but the ghost doesn’t let go. “Give me what I want, and I will be gone from this world, forever.” She leans forward and kisses him on the forehead.

It’s not Gemma. It’s the Vandrian, using Gemma as a mouthpiece, an apparition to manipulate Harry, to weaken him. To destroy him.

And suddenly, it’s clear what he has to do. An utter tranquility washes over him, the finality of it all settling in his gut. He stares into the blank white eyes of Gemma’s ghost, and she smiles. “Come with me.”

Harry lowers his hands.

“Harry!” It’s Liam this time. Liam has grabbed Harry’s ankle with a strength that costs him dearly if his pallid face is anything to go by.

He looks down. Liam’s eyes are still desperate, but Harry knows that this is what he must do. He kneels down. The hand that’s not clinging to Harry’s ankle is still pressed to his own chest, clawing at the darkness that infected him. Harry smiles gently and runs his hand slowly through Liam’s hair.

“You’re not going,” Liam pants. A sheen of sweat glistens on his forehead.

“I see it now. I’m the one who brought it here. Only I can free us from it.”

“No,” Liam fights vehemently, louder than before. “That’s what it wants you to think. It’s trying to destroy you, Harry.”

Harry gives a wan smile and shakes his head. “I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before.”

“Because it’s not true!” Liam shouts, now pushing himself up onto one elbow. “It tried to get me to kill you, too.”

“Because I have to,” Harry says. “I have to die, and it will die with me.”

“Harry,” Liam pleads in a quivering voice. “You’ll just be making it stronger.”

Harry shakes his head and lifts himself to his feet. “This is the only way.”

He turns towards the Vandrian, which has slowed its teeming. Gemma still shimmers in the air a few steps in front of him, beckoning Harry forward.

It’s such a strange inner peace. Harry hasn’t felt this calm for years. He smiles and holds his hand out towards Gemma.

Then Liam strikes.

He kicks his legs out in front him to catch the back of Harry’s knees. Harry, focusing on the ghost of Gemma, cries out in surprise and tips backward. Before he can react, Liam is upright, unsteady but with a look of utter determination on his weary face. He stands above Harry with his sword drawn and pointing at Harry’s neck.

Harry can’t even speak, surprised at finding himself once more on his back with Liam’s sword at his throat.

“Liam—”

“You’re the protector. I’m the killer.”

Harry can barely comprehend Liam’s words. “Liam—”

“Keep them safe.”

He turns and charges forward with a warcry, his blade slicing through the apparition of Gemma before bracing in front of him, point first, running full tilt at the engorged mass of shadows.

“ _NO!_ ” Harry yells, but Liam is only two steps away and there’s no way for Harry to catch him in time—

The clearing explodes, and Harry’s blinded by a flash of bright light at the same time that the force of the detonation bowls him end over end, until everything goes dark.

* * *

He’s standing in the river that runs past Glenfallow, except the colors are too dark, too dim, too wrong for it to be day. He turns to look upward, to find the moon, when he sees Gemma sitting on a rock across from him and almost falls over in surprise.

Except he doesn’t fall over, because his body eases into the water and through a rock without getting wet. Harry careens forward, trying to find something to grab hold of, when he feels another force pulling him upright.

Gemma lowers her hands. “Hi, Harry.”

It’s really her, or, at least as real as the colors allow. Her eyes are back, no longer gleaming pits of white blankness, and she’s smiling pleasantly. “Am I… home?” Harry asks, because he doesn’t know how else to phrase his question.

Gemma shakes her head. “This is not your Glenfallow. This is mine. I just wanted to speak to you.”

Harry nods slowly, although he doesn’t understand, at all. He seems to be in a different Glenfallow, of another time. He turns to look at the village, at the smoke rising peacefully from the chimney stacks. “What happened?”

“Your friend, Liam. He offered himself to the Vandrian instead.”

The memory flashes before Harry’s eyes, the moment just before the explosion. “Is that where we are now?”

“No. I will tell you. When you started your spell, I felt the moonstone from within the Vandrian.”

Harry stares, not quite processing her words because he’s still reeling from seeing Gemma in the flesh and blood. She continues. “I was able to get close to the earth, closer than I ever have these last seven years. So when your friend charged… that was a surprise, to be honest. And that helped. Because as soon as his hand broke through, I was able to grab ahold of him. We split the Vandrian in two.”

It’s almost too much for Harry to grasp. “You… and him?”

Gemma gives him a soft smile. “He’s a little more magickal than you think. Maybe more than he thinks, too. You should ask him about that talisman his father gave him.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say to that, because his mind jumps to Liam and his incredulous expression if Harry ever told him there was magick in his blood.

“Wait… does that mean I’m not dead? I’m going back?”

“Yes, Harry.”

She’s already fading, the saturated colors seeping into greyscale, and Harry takes a few stumbling steps forward to try to reach her. “Gemma, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be, Harry. You can stop being afraid. I’m proud of you.”

“Gemma—”

“You’ve protected Glenfallow. Thank you.”

Her voice fades, and Harry is left reaching forward into blackness.

She’s gone.

* * *

When Harry opens his eyes, Zayn Malik is standing over him, a confused look on his face.

“Are you all right?”

Harry sits up, and immediately regrets it when pain surges through his head. Entire trees are blown down, their trunks lying in parallel rows that extend outward from a hundred feet in front of him. Their roots drip dirt and debris onto the ruptured ground like blood.

“What happened here?” Zayn asks, putting a steadying hand on Harry’s back.

He doesn’t answer, only staggers to his feet. He feels Zayn’s hands on his shoulder, helping him up. His eyes travel to Zayn, then he turns to look back up the hill to the epicenter of the explosion.

Harry runs. There’s a body in the middle of the clearing, clad in leather armor. His sword lies a few feet away, gleaming in the autumn twilight. Harry drops to his knees and rolls Liam’s body over so that he’s lying on his back. His eyes are closed and his face utterly slack, but those thick, dark eyebrows raised as if in surprise.

He presses his hands against Liam’s chest, muttering charms and pleas so quickly that they blend together. He hardly notices the tears rolling down his cheeks, spotting Liam’s scuffed armor. “Please, Liam, please—”

Liam coughs, blinks, and stares up at Harry.

“Blimey—”

Harry doesn’t even let him get the word out. He crushes his lips against Liam’s and breathes deep, breathes the scent of silver, and musk, and sage.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I truly appreciate any and all feedback, so please comment!
> 
> Skye xx  
> You can find me on tumblr at [twistofpayne.](http://twistofpayne.tumblr.com/)


End file.
